58 Fun Facts About Yogurt

Yogurt gets its tart flavour and texture from bacteria converting milk sugars into which acid?

Lactic acid, produced as the cultures ferment the lactose in milk, lowers the pH and curdles the casein proteins, giving yogurt its tang and its set texture.

Which two bacteria are the standard cultures for making yogurt?

Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus are the two cultures the Codex Alimentarius yogurt standard requires; France reserves the label 'yaourt' for milk fermented by those two alone.

The word 'yogurt' comes from which language, from a verb meaning 'to knead' or 'to thicken'?

The form yuġrut appears in Uyghur texts from before the year 1000.

Which country has its own distinctive spelling, 'yogourt', alongside yogurt and yoghurt?

Canada uses 'yogourt' on packaging because the spelling reads in both official languages; in French it is a minority variant of the usual yaourt.

Yogurt was probably first made in Central Asia and Mesopotamia around when?

Around 5000 BC, when herders in Central Asia and Mesopotamia were milking domesticated animals, milk carried in goatskin bags likely soured into yogurt by chance.

The oldest writings mentioning yogurt, on 'barbarous nations' thickening milk to 'an agreeable acidity', are attributed to which Roman author?

Pliny the Elder, in his first-century Natural History, noted that certain 'barbarous nations' knew how to thicken milk into a substance with an agreeable acidity.

Which Bulgarian medical student first identified the rod-shaped bacterium in Bulgarian yogurt in 1905?

Stamen Grigorov, a Bulgarian medical student working in Geneva, isolated the rod-shaped bacillus in 1905; two years later it was named in honour of Bulgaria.

Which Nobel laureate argued yogurt explained Bulgarian peasants' long lives, popularising it across Europe?

Ilya Mechnikov, who shared the 1908 Nobel Prize for discovering phagocytosis, credited the long lives of Bulgarian peasants to the bacteria in their soured milk.

Isaac Carasso founded Danone in 1919 in which city, naming it after his son?

Barcelona was where Isaac Carasso began selling yogurt through pharmacies in 1919; Danone comes from 'Danon', the Catalan pet name of his son Daniel.

Yogurt with added fruit jam was patented in 1933 by a dairy in which city?

Prague was home to the Radlická Mlékárna dairy, which patented yogurt with added fruit jam in 1933.

Which American health reformer popularised yogurt at his Battle Creek Sanitarium?

John Harvey Kellogg served yogurt to patients at his Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, promoting it as a remedy for digestive ailments.

Colombo yogurt was first delivered by horse-drawn wagon bearing which word from the founders' homeland?

Madzoon, the Armenian word for yogurt, was painted on the Colombosian family's delivery wagon in 1929; they later switched to 'yogurt', the word their eastern Mediterranean customers knew.

In 1966 Colombo Yogurt tackled American distaste for sourness by inventing which format?

Fruit on the bottom put a layer of sweetened fruit preserves under plain yogurt, letting customers stir in as much sweetness as they liked and turning a sour product into a mainstream American snack.

Yogurt is fermented at a warm temperature of roughly 30-45°C for how long?

Between 4 to 12 hours at 30–45 °C is the usual window; a hotter, faster fermentation risks a lumpy curd, while a cooler one simply takes longer to set.

What defines 'set-style' yogurt, as opposed to stirred yogurt?

It sets in the pot it is sold in: set-style yogurt is incubated in its retail container, whereas stirred or 'Swiss-style' yogurt ferments in a vat and is stirred before filling.

Straining yogurt through cloth removes what to make it thicker?

Whey, the watery liquid left after the milk proteins curdle, drains through the cloth, leaving the thicker strained yogurt sold as Greek yogurt or labneh.

In Britain, what does the label 'Greek' rather than 'Greek-style' guarantee about a yogurt?

It was made in Greece: the 2014 Fage v Chobani ruling held that British shoppers understand 'Greek yoghurt' to mean thick strained yogurt made in Greece, so other producers must say 'Greek-style'.

Under which brand name did Greek company Fage import strained yogurt to Britain in the 1980s?

Total was the Fage brand that reached British shelves in 1983, when the company began exporting its strained yogurt; Fage itself is Greek for 'eat!'.

Chobani launched in 2007 from a New York plant that had been closed by which company?

Kraft Foods had shut the South Edmeston, New York plant in 2005; Hamdi Ulukaya bought it with a Small Business Administration loan and rehired several former Kraft workers.

In April 2016 Hamdi Ulukaya announced he was giving Chobani employees what?

10% of the company's shares were handed to about 2,000 full-time Chobani employees in April 2016, with the largest grants going to the longest-serving staff.

Which yogurt brand's flower logo has six petals for its six founding French dairy cooperatives?

Yoplait was formed in 1965 by merging the cooperative brands Yola and Coplait; its six-petal flower logo stands for the six founding dairy cooperatives.

The name Yakult was coined from 'jahurto', the word for yogurt in which language?

Esperanto supplied the name: Yakult is adapted from jahurto, the constructed language's word for yogurt, which Minoru Shirota chose when he launched the drink in 1935.

Danone's Activia was launched in France in which year, under the 'Bio' brand name?

1987 was the French launch year: Danone sold the yogurt, cultured with its own Bifidobacterium strain, as 'Bio' before rebranding it Activia for markets where 'bio' means organic.

Why can plant-based alternatives not be sold as 'yogurt' in the European Union?

The word is reserved for animal-origin foods: EU law keeps dairy names such as milk, butter and yogurt for products derived from milk, as the Court of Justice confirmed in the 2017 TofuTown case.

In parts of the Balkans and Anatolia, yogurt has traditionally been made by adding what to warm milk?

Red wood ants, dropped live into warm milk, supply formic acid that sours it and carry bacteria that ferment it, a practice recorded in Bulgarian villages.

Which yogurt, one of Hindu ritual's five panchamrita elixirs, is named from the Sanskrit for 'sour milk'?

Dahi, named from the Sanskrit dadhi for sour milk, is the curd set from boiled milk with a spoonful of the previous batch as starter, and one of the five panchamrita ingredients.

Lassi, the blended yogurt drink, is traditionally associated with which Indian region?

Punjab is the traditional home of lassi, which blends yogurt with water and is served either sweet with sugar or salted with roasted cumin.

Shrikhand, the western Indian dessert of strained yogurt, is flavoured with sugar and which spices?

Saffron, cardamom and nutmeg perfume the sweetened strained curd; with mango pulp blended in, shrikhand becomes amrakhand.

Ayran, the salty yogurt drink, is a national drink of which country?

Turkey is ayran's home, where the blend of yogurt, cold water and salt is served with kebabs and sold in cartons everywhere.

Zabadi, the yogurt of Egypt, is especially associated with which observance?

Ramadan fasting is when zabadi comes into its own: Egyptians eat it at the pre-dawn suhoor meal in the belief that it wards off thirst through the daylight fast.

Jameed, yogurt that is salted and dried to preserve it, is a staple of which country?

Jordan is jameed's home: the salted, sun-dried balls of sheep's or goat's yogurt are reconstituted into the sauce for mansaf, the national dish.

Juju dhau, a celebrated sweet yogurt, comes from Bhaktapur in which country?

Nepal's Newar community in Bhaktapur sets juju dhau, the 'king of yogurts', in unglazed clay pots that wick away moisture and leave it dense and sweet.

Dadiah, a traditional yogurt of West Sumatra, is fermented from buffalo milk inside what?

Bamboo tubes hold the raw milk, which is capped with a banana leaf and left to ferment for about two days in the Minangkabau highlands of West Sumatra.

Skyr, the thick Icelandic staple, is technically classified as what?

A fresh sour-milk cheese is the technical classification, because skyr is made by warming skimmed milk with cultures and rennet and draining the curd; it appears in Egil's saga.

Kefir is made with 'grains' that resemble what?

Small cauliflower florets is the usual comparison for kefir grains, the rubbery white clusters of bacteria and yeasts bound in a polysaccharide matrix that seed each new batch.

Viili, the stretchy Nordic cultured milk, gets its velvety surface from what?

A yeast-like fungus, Geotrichum candidum, grows across the top of viili as a velvet-like mat while bacteria below give the Finnish staple its ropey stretch.

Frozen yogurt first went on sale in the 1970s in which US region?

New England is where frozen yogurt first went on sale in the 1970s, as a soft-serve product that the Boston dairy H. P. Hood marketed as Frogurt.

Before 1984, the frozen dessert chain TCBY's initials stood for what?

This Can't Be Yogurt was the original expansion when Frank Hickingbotham opened the first store in Little Rock in 1981; a lawsuit by rival I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! prompted the switch to The Country's Best Yogurt.

Pinkberry's founders opened their first shop in 2005 only after West Hollywood refused what for their original plan?

An alcohol permit for a teahouse was denied to Shelly Hwang and Young Lee, so they switched to frozen yogurt and opened the first Pinkberry in West Hollywood in January 2005.

In Seinfeld's 'The Non-Fat Yogurt', the fat in the yogurt affects the outcome of what?

The 1993 New York mayoral election is tipped by the scandal: candidate Rudy Giuliani, filmed for the episode, blames his raised cholesterol on the supposedly non-fat yogurt.

In Mel Brooks's Spaceballs, the wise sage named Yogurt teaches Lone Starr to use which power?

The Schwartz is the film's parody of the Force; Mel Brooks played Yogurt himself, pausing the plot to hawk Spaceballs merchandise straight to camera.

Plain whole-milk yogurt is a particularly rich source of which vitamin?

B12 is abundant in dairy: 100 g of plain whole-milk yogurt supplies about 0.4 µg, roughly a sixth of the 2.4 µg an adult needs each day.

Why can mould on yogurt not simply be scraped off?

The texture lets it spread deep beneath the surface: in a soft, moist food like yogurt the mould's root-like threads penetrate far below the visible patch, so the whole pot should be discarded.

In 2010 the EU food safety authority allowed a claim that live yogurt cultures help with what?

Lactose intolerance is the condition: EFSA ruled that live yogurt cultures improve lactose digestion, provided the yogurt carries at least 100 million CFU of starter bacteria per gram.

Tarator and cacık, cold yogurt soups, are made with ayran, dill and which vegetable?

Cucumber, diced or grated, is the vegetable; garlic and crushed walnuts are the usual extras, and tzatziki is the thicker Greek cousin.

Galen wrote that oxygala, the ancient Greek yogurt-like dairy food, was eaten with what?

Honey was the accompaniment Galen recorded for oxygala, the soured milk of ancient Greece, a pairing that matches the modern Greek habit of serving thick yogurt with honey.

Which company bought the Colombo yogurt brand in 1993 and later discontinued it in 2010?

General Mills bought Colombo in 1993 and dropped the brand in 2010; the company had been founded in Massachusetts by the Armenian immigrant Colombosian family in 1929.

Labneh, the strained yogurt of the Middle East, can be rolled into balls and preserved in what?

Olive oil covers the rolled labneh balls in a jar, keeping out air so the salted, well-drained yogurt cheese keeps for months in the pantry.

Which 11th-century scholar's Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk records yogurt use among nomadic Turks?

Mahmud Kashgari compiled the Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk, his dictionary of Turkic dialects, in the 1070s; the contemporary Kutadgu Bilig of Yusuf Has Hajib also records yogurt among the nomads.

Bogurar doi, a sweetened yogurt with geographical-indication status, comes from which country?

Bangladesh registered Bogurar doi as a geographical-indication product; the sweet, caramel-coloured set curd takes its name from the northern city of Bogura.

In Tibet, yogurt is traditionally made from the milk of which animal?

Yak herds supply the milk, strictly from the female, called a dri in Tibetan, since the word yak properly denotes the male; the yogurt is central to Lhasa's summer Shoton festival.

Borhani, a spicy Bangladeshi yogurt drink, is usually served at weddings alongside which dish?

Kacchi biryani, the layered mutton dish that anchors Bangladeshi wedding feasts, is traditionally washed down with borhani, whose mint, mustard and black salt cut through the richness.

Dovga, a yogurt soup served warm in winter or cold in summer, is cooked with herbs and what?

Rice is simmered in the yogurt with a flour-and-egg thickener and handfuls of dill, coriander, mint and spinach to make Azerbaijan's dovga, stirred constantly so it does not curdle.

'Cream line' yogurt is made from whole milk that has skipped which process, so the cream rises?

Homogenisation forces milk through fine nozzles to shatter its fat globules; skip it and the larger globules float, so a cream layer sets on top of the pot.

When yogurt arrived in the United States in the early 1900s, it was sold in which unusual form?

Tablets were the first American form, sold in the early 1900s for home culturing and for digestive complaints, after a 1908 bestseller credited sour milk with Bulgarian longevity.

Meta-analyses linked 80 g a day of low-fat yogurt to lower type 2 diabetes risk and fewer of what?

Hip fractures were the bone-health outcome, with the association seen in post-menopausal women; the diabetes link came from pooled cohort studies of about 80 g of low-fat yogurt daily.

Which Hungarian-born bacteriologist helped present yogurt as a health food in 1950s-60s America?

Stephen A. Gaymont, an émigré bacteriologist who built a business supplying yogurt cultures, promoted yogurt to postwar Americans as a health food.

Khyar w laban, a cucumber-and-yogurt salad, is a dish of Lebanon and which neighbouring country?

Syria shares the dish with Lebanon: khyar w laban is simply the sliced vegetable in salted yogurt with dried mint and garlic, served beside grilled meats.