In case you didn’t know, there’s now a bigger bottle of everyone’s fave childhood drink, and we can actually get it here in the Philippines.
What we commonly see here is a pack of five 80 ml Yakult bottles, which only totals 400 ml. But online Japanese ingredients and snacks store Tokyo Market PH now has the famed 500 ml Yakult bottles.
The product description says this version of the cultured drink “has a slightly longer ingredient list, which includes high-fructose corn syrup (an artificial sweetener derived from corn syrup), skimmed milk powder, fermented milk and caramel pigment.”
But hold on, so this isn’t quite the “original” Yakult? A review from Singaporean website Mothership described the supersized drink “a little watered down” and less sweet, though it still has that similar tangy taste.
Apparently, there’s a reason why Yakult only comes in small bottles. The live Lactobacillus casei (or lactic acid bacteria) in the drink is beneficial to our health, but drinking too much isn’t recommended. According to Yakult’s FAQ on its official website, the tiny bottle was designed so people could consume just the right amount of the probiotic drink every day.
Yakult also contains live cultured bacteria (good ones, don’t worry). According to a Yakult representative (care of this recent viral post), packaging the drink in bigger bottles makes it prone to contamination if we’re gonna keep opening and closing the lid.
But not to worry, as it seems that this is only a similar drink to the OG. Mothership’s review notes that the ingredients list in the bigger Yakult doesn’t mention the live bacteria strain unlike the tiny bottles, so the bigger Yakult mainly has fermented and skimmed milk with artificial sweeteners.
If y’all are keen on buying some, each bottle costs P130. But as of now, Tokyo Market PH’s on-hand stock (and even incoming ones next week) are already sold out. According to its IG post, the next batch of supersized Yakult drinks will arrive by the end of March.
Meanwhile, you can preorder online and check out other snacks. Wonder if they got any interesting Pringles flavors there, too.
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Photos from Tokyo Market PH’s Facebook page