Household Ingredients Compared  ›  Kefir (Singapore)

Kefir: what's actually in it?

Kefir in Singapore is a small, specialist range — not a supermarket-staple category like milk or juice. That is the first finding of this page, and it shapes everything else: almost everything verified here comes from three sources — Little Farms (Babushka, an Australian brand), and two Singapore brewers who sell direct (Fizzicle and Craft & Culture). No FairPrice/Cold Storage/Giant/Sheng Siong house or mainstream-brand kefir with a verifiable ingredient list was found in this pass.

Two kinds of kefir are kept strictly separate here, because they share a name and almost nothing else:

• Dairy (milk) kefir — milk fermented with kefir cultures. Thick, tangy, yoghurt-like, contains milk. Flavoured versions add fruit, honey/turmeric, coconut or sweeteners.
• Water kefir — sugar water fermented with water-kefir grains, then flavoured with fruit/herbs. Dairy-free, vegan, no caffeine, thinner and fizzier. It is not a milk product at all.

This page does not give a health score and makes no gut-health or probiotic claim beyond quoting what the brands themselves print. Strain names and CFU counts are quoted as the brands' statements where given, not verified by this page.

The headline, in 30 seconds

• Singapore's kefir shelf is small — and this page does not pad it. Sixteen products are panelled with verbatim lists; the rest of the names found (Miss Kefir, other Craft & Culture flavours, Babushka's new Banana/Mango/High Protein flavours, Forager Project Blueberry) are in the seen-but-not-verified list with reasons, not given invented panels.
• “No added sugar” needs reading, not trusting. Babushka's kefirs say “no added sugar” — but the Coconut and Honey Turmeric versions list erythritol and stevia (sweeteners, not sugar) and the Honey Turmeric version lists honey (0.14%). “No added sugar” on these labels means no sucrose-type sugar added, not “unsweetened”. Craft & Culture's Original milk kefir, by contrast, lists just milk + cultures (plus “flavours” on its product page — see the discrepancy flag).
• Babushka's “milk kefir” is made from reconstituted milk powder, not fresh milk. Its lists start with “full cream milk reconstituted from milk powder” (or water + milk powder in the organic version) plus inulin (prebiotic fibre), whey protein, pectin and cultures. That is a formulated yoghurt-drink-style product, quite different from Craft & Culture's fresh-milk kefir. Both are called kefir; their ingredient logic is different.
• Water kefir always lists sugar — and that is normal. Sugar is the fermentation feedstock for water-kefir grains; most of it is consumed during fermentation, and the residual sweetness depends on brew time. Fizzicle's water kefirs list “filtered water, live cultures, sugar” plus their flavourings, in every flavour checked.
• Flavour is where the lists diverge. Plain dairy kefir can be two ingredients; flavoured dairy kefir adds fruit, sweeteners or honey/turmeric; water kefir flavour comes from fruit/herbs added after fermentation. The at-a-glance table below keeps plain and flavoured rows apart for exactly this reason.

At a glance

Prices are deliberately not shown here: they change weekly and would go stale. This site compares ingredients only.

Dairy kefir — Babushka at Little Farms (reconstituted-milk base)

Babushka describes itself as Australia's oldest kefir manufacturer, making kefir by traditional methods, with “billions of live and active cultures per serve”, “15 different strains of probiotic cultures”, and prebiotics added. Those are the brand's statements, quoted as such. The lists below are what Little Farms prints for each variant.

Dairy kefir — Craft & Culture, Singapore brewer (fresh-milk base)

Dairy kefir — Pastoret, Spain (at Little Farms)

Dairy-free kefir — Forager Project, US (at Little Farms) — US listing; SG pack to confirm

Water kefir — Fizzicle, Singapore brewer (dairy-free)

Fizzicle (Harper Road, Singapore) describes water kefir as a dairy-free, vegan, zero-caffeine probiotic drink, also called tibicos, and states its drinks contain up to 70 varieties of bacteria and yeasts. Its ingredient lists are short and consistent across flavours: filtered water, live cultures, sugar (the fermentation feedstock), plus the flavour ingredients. Sugar remaining after fermentation is not stated on the product pages checked — do not assume the listed sugar is the sugar in the finished bottle.

Seen but not verified — do not panel until checked:

• Miss Kefir (Singapore) — serves milk and water kefir in small batches (plain milk kefir, cinnamon and turmeric flavours, acai berry milk kefir; water kefir in passion fruit, ginger lime and blueberry mixes), using organic cane sugar and hormone/antibiotic-free Australian milk according to background coverage. No verbatim ingredient list for any Miss Kefir product was found in this pass.
• Craft & Culture other milk kefir flavours (Lemon, Rose Bandung, Juicy Melon [new seasonal], Premium Houjicha Roasted Tea, Premium Matcha Green Tea) — names only on the brand's product sitemap, 5 November 2026; no verbatim lists found. The Houjicha sitemap link returned 404 when opened. The Original panel's “flavours” discrepancy is partly resolved (standalone page lists 2 ingredients) but the sampler page still says “flavours” — see that panel.
• Babushka new flavours at Little Farms — Kefir Banana 750g, Kefir Mango 500g and 750g, High Protein Kefir Strawberry 500g — listed as “New” at Little Farms, 5 November 2026; no ingredient lists retrieved for any of them.
• Forager Project Organic Cashew & Coconut Kefir — Blueberry — listed at Little Farms alongside the panelled Strawberry; no ingredient list retrieved (do not borrow the Strawberry list — different fruit).
• Fizzicle other water kefir flavours and surprise packs — the Surprise Pack bundles Bahamas Villa, Berry Fairy and Nighty Night (all panelled above); any further Fizzicle water kefir flavours beyond those three had no verbatim list found in this pass.
• Barambah Coconut Kefir Yoghurt — appears only as an ingredient in a Little Farms café smoothie menu (“Barambah coconut kefir yoghurt”); no retail product page or ingredient list was found. It is a spoonable yoghurt, not a kefir drink, in any case — noted here so the Little Farms check is visible.
• Lifeway, Biotiful and other international kefir brands — no Singapore supermarket or SG-facing listing with a verifiable ingredient list was found in this pass. (A low-quality aggregator page claiming “FairPrice offers Lifeway” was found and disregarded as unreliable — it reads as auto-generated SEO text, not a retailer listing.)
• FairPrice / Cold Storage / Giant / Sheng Siong / Donki / Mustafa / Meidi-Ya / Le Petit Depot / RedMart chilled kefir — no mainstream-brand kefir with a verifiable list was found from those channels in this pass. Scoop Wholefoods and other specialty stockists are named in coverage as Fizzicle stockists, but no additional kefir brand with a list was verified from them either.
• Kefir grains / DIY kefir kits, kefir powder sachets — out of scope for a ready-to-drink comparison; noted here so the boundary is explicit.

Nutrition — what the numbers say

Salt on this page is shown as salt = sodium × 2.5: sodium is quoted as printed, with the salt equivalent in brackets. Sodium is never presented as salt. Sugars below are total sugars as printed; the ingredient lists above are the evidence for added sugar — Babushka's listings state "no added sugar" for the Natural, Coconut and (with the honey tension flagged above) Honey & Turmeric variants. Figures are per 100g as sold, from Little Farms Singapore nutrition tables, unless stated otherwise.

As observed numbers only: the highest energy figure in the table is Coconut at 412kJ per 100g; the highest sugars figure is the top of the Organic Natural range at 6.0g per 100g; the lowest sodium figure is Honey & Turmeric at 32mg per 100g (salt 0.08g). No health verdict, ranking or pick is drawn from these numbers.

Seen but not verified (nutrition): Babushka Probiotic Kefir — Vanilla (the Little Farms vanilla URL from the ingredient list returned 404 when re-checked 5 November 2026, and no vanilla nutrition panel was found elsewhere in this pass); Craft & Culture Sakura Peach Whole Milk Kefir; Pastoret Mango Kefir and Forager Project Cashew & Coconut Kefir — Strawberry (no nutrition panels retrieved for either in this pass); Fizzicle Bahamas Villa, Nighty Night and Berry Fairy water kefirs (no nutrition panels found on the brewers' pages in this pass). These products stay panelled for ingredients above; their nutrition is not estimated or borrowed from another flavour. The five Craft & Culture rows above are partial (sugars and saturated fat only, from the brand's Nutri-Grade statements) — their full panels are still unverified.

How to read a kefir label — the jargon, in plain English

Kefir cultures / kefir grains

The live community of bacteria and yeasts that ferments the milk or sugar water. “Live cultures” on a label means the microbes are present in the bottle; it does not by itself state how many survive to drinking time. CFU (colony-forming units) counts, where brands state them, are usually “at manufacture” — check whether the label says so.

Milk kefir vs water kefir

Milk kefir is fermented milk (contains milk, thick, yoghurt-like). Water kefir is fermented sugar water (dairy-free, thin, fizzy). If the first ingredient is milk/milk powder, it is dairy kefir; if it is water + sugar, it is water kefir — whatever the flavour name suggests.

Reconstituted milk

Milk powder mixed back with water. Babushka's lists say this explicitly. It is still milk, but it is not fresh milk — and it explains why thickeners (inulin, pectin) and whey protein appear in the same list.

Inulin (prebiotic fibre)

A soluble fibre, often from chicory, added as a prebiotic (food for gut microbes, per the brands) and as a thickener. It is not a sweetener, though it can add mild sweetness/body.

Erythritol, stevia (steviol glycosides)

Sweeteners that are not sugar: erythritol is a sugar alcohol, stevia is a plant-derived high-intensity sweetener. A product listing them can truthfully say “no added sugar” while still being sweetened — read the list, not the claim.

Pectin, citrus fibre

Thickeners/stabilisers that give kefir its spoonable/thick-drink body and stop it separating. Their presence marks a formulated product rather than milk + cultures alone.

Food acid (ascorbic) / vitamin C

Ascorbic acid listed as a food acid (acidity regulator/antioxidant) or as vitamin C. Same substance, two label roles — the list position and wording tell you which role the manufacturer is claiming.

“No added sugar”

On this page's products, this phrase coexists with honey (Babushka Honey & Turmeric), erythritol/stevia (Babushka Coconut, Honey & Turmeric) and fermentation sugar (all water kefirs). It is a labelling definition, not a synonym for “unsweetened” — always check the list behind it.

What this page is not

• Not a health score, and not medical or probiotic advice. Strain counts and gut-health descriptions are the brands' statements, quoted as such.
• Not a price comparison. Prices change weekly; ingredients change less often, but still change.
• Not complete. This is a small category in Singapore and the page says so: ten verified products, with the rest of the names found left honestly unverified rather than padded with overseas or invented lists.

Sources and method

Checked 5–6 November 2026 from: Little Farms product pages (ingredient sections for all five Babushka variants); Fizzicle product pages (Bahamas Villa, Nighty Night, Berry Fairy water kefirs); Craft & Culture product/FAQ pages (Original and Sakura Peach milk kefirs); background coverage (Coconuts, Kaizenaire, Honeycombers) for inventory only — flavour names from coverage without a verbatim list were placed in seen-but-not-verified, not panelled. Full per-fact source list is in the accompanying research notes.

Nutrition note (added 5–6 November 2026): the "Nutrition — what the numbers say" section above standardises figures to per 100g or per 100ml wherever the pack or retailer gives per-100 figures; figures available only per serving are quoted exactly as per serving (with serving size as printed) and are not converted to per-100. Sugars are total sugars as printed, not added sugars — the ingredient list is the evidence for added sugar. Salt = sodium × 2.5; sodium is shown as printed with the salt equivalent in brackets, and is never presented as salt. Where Singapore's official Nutri-Grade is printed on a drink pack or listing it is quoted as printed; no grade has been assigned by this site, and no health score, ranking or "best" pick is given. Products whose nutrition could not be verified are listed under "seen but not verified (nutrition)" on each page, not estimated.