Folks who wish Yakult would supersize its probiotic cultured milk drink — here’s a 500ml bottle to try. Japanese discount chain Don Don Donki had recently begun stocking a lactic acid bottled drink with Yakult’s branding. 8days.sg found the drink, which costs $2.50 each, displayed at the chilled beverages section.

The bottle’s main label in Japanese states that it is a “Yakult [brand] yogurt drink”. According to an English label pasted over the bottle’s Japanese wording, it is a “fermented milk drink”. It sounds similar to the original Yakult, which has sweetened probiotic milk fermented with a beneficial L. casei live bacteria strain.

But once we compare the ingredients in both drinks, it’s clear that the giant Yakult is not simply an upsized version of the original. The 100ml OG bottle has a shorter list of ingredients, starting with sucrose (aka table sugar), dried skimmed milk, glucose, fructose, flavouring and the L. casei bacteria strain.

Meanwhile, the 500ml version 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 it doesn’t have the L. casei strain, which Yakult markets as being good for our digestive system. Instead, this drink contains “galacto-oligosaccharides liquid sugar”, which is scientific jargon for a prebiotic compound that’s also apparently helpful for digestion.

At first glance, both drinks share the same yellow-tinged, milky white hue, though the 500ml bottle appears more watery. We first take a sip of the original flavour Yakult, which most people would know tastes like ultra sweet, tangy liquid yogurt.

Then we compare it with the 500ml Yakult, which is like… a diluted version of the original. It is also less sweet and very similar to Bikkle, the popular yogurt-based drink produced by Japanese drinks giant Suntory.

Logically, we expect the 500ml drink to be less potent than the smaller, much more concentrated original Yakult. After all, Yakult’s website recommends that adults drink no more than one 100ml bottle a day, so imagine the chaos of swigging half a full strength litre at one go. Still, this is a fun and very adorable drink to try.

Available at Don Don Donki outlets.

PHOTOS: YIP JIEYING