56 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 milk's sugar, lowers the pH and makes the casein proteins clump, 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?

Turkish spells it yoğurt, with a soft g that modern Turkish barely sounds, while English, which borrowed the word in 1625, kept a hard g.

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 around 5000 BC by herders in Central Asia and which other region?

Mesopotamia is the usual candidate because its herders had domesticated goats and sheep by about 5000 BC; their stored milk is thought to have soured into curd by accident.

Which Roman author noted that 'barbarous nations' knew how to thicken milk into a pleasantly tart food?

Pliny the Elder recorded it in his Natural History; he died in AD 79 after taking ships across the Bay of Naples toward erupting Vesuvius.

Which Indian side dish of yogurt, chopped vegetables and spices is served to cool a fiery curry?

Raita is the cooling partner to spicy dishes, yet its Hindi name traces back to Sanskrit words meaning a pungent mustard pickle.

Which Nobel laureate credited yogurt for the long lives of Balkan peasants, popularising it across Europe?

Ilya Mechnikov, working at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, blamed ageing on poisons made by gut bacteria and prescribed soured milk to hold them back, a diet that became a craze.

Danone began in 1919 as a small yogurt business in which Spanish city?

Barcelona is where Isaac Carasso first sold his yogurt through pharmacies as a medicine; he named it Danone after his son Daniel, who later took the brand to France.

Kefir, the tangy fermented-milk cousin of yogurt, has its roots in which mountain region?

The Caucasus is kefir's home; unlike yogurt it ferments at room temperature, and the mixed microbes living in its grains leave it with a faint fizz.

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

John Harvey Kellogg believed yogurt's bacteria guarded the bowel against disease, so his sanitarium patients got it at both ends: some to eat and some as an enema.

Dannon's 1970s TV adverts linked yogurt to long life by filming aged villagers in which Soviet republic?

Georgia was the setting; in one advert an 89-year-old villager eats Dannon, and the voice-over adds that this pleased his mother very much, for she was billed as 114.

Dannon won over Americans who found plain yogurt too tart by launching which format?

Fruit on the bottom put a layer of sweet fruit under Dannon's plain yogurt; sales grew so quickly that the firm left its Bronx plant for a larger one in Long Island City.

Kept warm at about 40°C, cultured milk usually sets into yogurt over which stretch of time?

Several hours is the window, usually 4 to 12 at 30–45 °C: the cultures work faster the warmer they are kept, and dairies running near 43 °C finish in about four.

Where does 'set-style' yogurt ferment, unlike stirred yogurt, which ferments in a tank?

In the pot it's sold in: set-style yogurt is filled into its retail container before it ferments, so the curd is never broken, while stirred yogurt is cultured in bulk and stirred smooth.

Straining yogurt through cloth removes what to make it thicker?

Whey, the watery part of milk left when the curd forms, drains away through the cloth; what stays behind is thicker, tangier and higher in protein.

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

It was made in Greece: in Fage v Chobani the English courts ruled, and confirmed on appeal in 2014, that shoppers take 'Greek yoghurt' to mean yogurt from Greece, so US-made Chobani had to drop the name.

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

Total is still the name on Fage's strained yogurt; when rival Chobani reached British shops in 2012, Fage took it to court over the wording on its pots and won.

Chobani began after Hamdi Ulukaya saw a shuttered yogurt plant advertised where?

In junk mail: the ad offered an old Kraft factory in South Edmeston, New York; Ulukaya binned it, fished it back out, toured the plant the next day and bought it with a small-business loan.

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

10% of the company's shares were promised to Chobani's employees in April 2016, with each grant sized by length of service and paid out when the company is sold or goes public.

Which yogurt brand's flower logo was drawn with six petals, one for each founding French dairy cooperative?

Yoplait began in 1965 when six French dairy cooperatives joined forces, coining the name by blending two of their existing brands, Yola and Coplait.

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

Esperanto supplied the name: Minoru Shirota adapted jahurto for the drink he launched in 1935, built on a bacterial strain he had selected because it survives stomach acid.

Which Danone yogurt was launched in France in 1987 under the name 'Bio' before being rebranded?

Activia started out as 'Bio'; Danone had to drop that name after European rules kept 'bio' for organic food, which the yogurt was not.

What stops plant-based alternatives being sold as 'yogurt' in the EU?

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 the microbes that ferment it, a folk method now studied by food scientists.

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 where lassi began; traditionally it comes in a kulhar, a handleless clay cup made to be thrown away after one use, sometimes with clotted cream spooned on top.

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

Saffron, cardamom and nutmeg perfume the sweetened curd; in one popular legend, herders strained their yogurt to carry it overnight, then added sugar when it turned sharp.

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

Turkey claims ayran as a national drink: in 2013 prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared the blend of yogurt, water and salt the country's true drink, in contrast to beer.

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 hard, salted balls of dried sheep's or goat's yogurt are dissolved into the broth for mansaf, the national dish of lamb.

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

Nepal's Newars in Bhaktapur say the name, 'king of yogurt', goes back to Malla kings who prized it; makers bed the clay bowls of sweetened milk in husk to keep them warm while it sets.

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 on its own for about two days by the Minangkabau people 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, white-to-yellowish clusters of microbes that keep growing in the milk they ferment, so each batch yields more grains for the next.

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.

Which word describes the live bacteria added to some yogurts for their claimed gut-health benefits?

Probiotic bacteria are extra strains added on top of the two cultures that turn milk into yogurt, on the theory that they top up the gut's own flora.

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 turned to frozen yogurt in 2005 after West Hollywood refused them what?

A teahouse alcohol permit was what Shelly Hwang and Young Lee were denied, so they dropped their plan for a formal English teahouse and opened the first Pinkberry 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 good natural source of which vitamin?

Vitamin B12 is made only by microbes and reaches people through animal foods, which makes dairy a key supply for vegetarians; 100 g of plain yogurt holds about 0.4 µg of an adult's daily 2.4.

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

Lactose intolerance is eased because some of the live bacteria carry their own lactase, the enzyme that splits milk sugar; the claim requires at least 100 million of them per gram.

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

Cucumber, diced or grated, is the vegetable; in the Levant the name tarator means something else entirely, a tahini sauce with no yogurt in it.

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 American cereal giant bought the Colombo yogurt brand in 1993 and discontinued it in 2010?

General Mills bought Colombo in 1993 and retired the name in 2010 to concentrate on its bigger yogurt label, 81 years after the Colombosian family first sold it in Massachusetts.

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.

Kumis, the fermented-milk drink of Central Asia's steppe nomads, is traditionally made from which animal's milk?

Horse milk, taken from mares, is what steppe herders ferment into kumis; it is sweeter than cow's milk, so the finished drink carries a mild alcoholic kick.

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

Bangladesh's Bogura was in East Pakistan when Pakistan's president tasted the curd there and took to sending it abroad to win over foreign dignitaries.

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 yogurt drink, is usually served at weddings alongside which dish?

Kacchi biryani and other heavy wedding dishes are followed by borhani because the drink, sharp with mint, mustard seed and black salt, is taken to aid digestion.

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

Rice goes into the yogurt with a little flour and egg and handfuls of dill, coriander, mint and spinach; at Azerbaijani feasts dovga is served between meat courses to help digestion.

'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.

Pooled studies have linked eating yogurt daily to lower type 2 diabetes risk and, in post-menopausal women, fewer of what?

Hip fractures were rarer among post-menopausal women who ate the most yogurt, but the studies only tracked people's habits, so they show a link, not proof that yogurt protects bones.

Which Greek dip of strained yogurt and garlic is the classic sauce for gyros and souvlaki?

Tzatziki is a thick dip in Greece, but farther north in the Balkans much the same mix is thinned with water and eaten as a cold soup, tarator.