A Turkish Founder's Yogurt Got The Greek Name
Fage arrived first, Chobani followed the label, and strained yogurt came to mean Greek.
The Sporkful · Live: The Great Yogurt FeudThe shuttered milk plant in northern New York sat empty when its new owner had to decide which style to produce there.
He aimed to recreate the variety he had enjoyed growing up in Turkey. It was thickened by draining off whey, the watery liquid left from milk, which leaves a denser, thicker yogurt.
That yogurt became Chobani, the brand started by a Turkish founder that made strained yogurt a big seller. After its debut in 2005, the strained category expanded from under one percent of national yogurt sales to over one-half.
The Greek name was already waiting for him. In 1998, Fage, spelled F-A-G-E, had become the first widely sold yogurt labeled Greek on American shelves. Fage was imported from Greece, and it was strained. Shoppers already linked strained yogurt with Greece because of Fage, so he used the Greek label too.
Greece does make strained yogurt, and by then American shoppers had already come to link strained with Greek. But strained yogurt is also made in many other places, including Turkey, Iran, and even Bulgaria, where people eat yogurt morning, noon, and night and built a museum to it.
Chobani arrived at the right moment for American worries about food. Shoppers were starting to worry more about sweets, and strained yogurt seemed rich even when it had no sugar and no fat. Because straining concentrates the yogurt, it can have roughly double or triple the protein of unstrained yogurt in the same amount. Interest in protein has grown sharply lately, lifting Greek yogurt with it.
Bulgarian yogurt maker Atanas Valev, who sells his own creamy, unstrained yogurt in the United States, has never accepted the shorthand. "When you strain a yogurt, you call it strained. That's it," he said. "There's nothing Greek about it."
He has watched from the outside as the category he disputes keeps growing. In the past few months, Greek frozen yogurt shops have drawn lines out the door in New York, complete with influencer videos of those lines, while people in Bulgaria, who identified the key bacteria, watch their neighbor get the credit.
Questions people ask
What does strained yogurt actually mean?
Strained yogurt is regular yogurt with some of the liquid whey drained off. Removing that liquid makes the yogurt thicker, denser, and higher in protein per spoonful, and it will hold its shape on a spoon.
Is Chobani a Greek company?
No. Chobani's founder is Turkish, and he based the yogurt on the strained style he knew from childhood in Turkey. He marketed it as Greek because Fage, a company imported from Greece, had already taught shoppers to call strained yogurt Greek.
Who is Fage?
Fage, pronounced fa-yeh, is a dairy company from Greece whose strained yogurt was imported to America in 1998. It was the first major Greek yogurt brand here, and its success established strained as Greek in shoppers' minds.
Why did protein matter so much to Greek yogurt's rise?
Because straining concentrates milk solids, strained yogurt can have two to three times the protein of unstrained yogurt in the same serving. That advantage arrived just as many Americans were avoiding sugar and seeking protein, so a thick yogurt with no added sugar still felt like a treat.