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Yogurt was once sold as medicine
Yogurt as medicine
It started in 1905, when Bulgarian scientist Stamen Grigorov carried yogurt from his home village to the Pasteur Institute in France. Under the microscope he became the first person in history to see the main bacteria behind yogurt, and in honor of his home country the bacterium was named Lactobacillus bulgaricus.
Around then, researchers in Paris who were studying longevity found people deep in the Bulgarian mountains who claimed to be 120 years old. The scientists took the age as entirely possible and the yogurt as the reason, and word spread that Bulgarian yogurt was a fountain of youth.
Dannon and fruit
Yogurt was not a big part of Western European cooking, so the first buyers got it from pharmacists. Dannon, founded by a Greek man who had read the Pasteur Institute studies on yogurt's health benefits, set up in Paris and became effectively the first global yogurt brand. Bulgaria, the reason for the frenzy, was left in the dust on branding, and by the time Dannon reached the United States in 1942 there was no mention of Bulgarian yogurt.
Plain yogurt, with no sugar and no flavoring, was a hard sell in a country where sugar cereals were hitting the market. Dannon put fruit on the bottom. Yoplait, another French brand, arrived in the '70s, and by 1990 American yogurt shelves were full of fruity, sugary cups.
Why did scientists link yogurt to long life?
Ilya Mechnikov, a Russian biologist at the Pasteur Institute, argued in the early 1900s that toxins from gut bacteria wore the body down with age. He thought the lactic acid bacteria in soured milk could crowd those microbes out. Mechnikov had shared the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on immune cells, which gave his yogurt claims extra weight. He set the idea out in his book The Prolongation of Life.
Why was early yogurt sold in pharmacies?
Isaac Carasso began selling yogurt in Barcelona in 1919, and he sold it through pharmacies because it was marketed for digestive complaints. He named the company Danone after his son Daniel, whose nickname was Danon. He opened a plant in Paris in 1929.
How did fruit end up on the bottom?
Fruit-on-the-bottom cups put a jam-like fruit preparation in the cup first and let the yogurt set on top. The eater stirs the two together, which turns a sour food into a sweet one. Swiss-style yogurt, with the fruit blended through the whole batch before filling, is the other common format.
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