60 Fun Facts About Yogurt

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

The acid acts on milk protein to set the texture.

Which two bacteria are the standard cultures for making yogurt?

France only allows the label 'yaourt' if those two alone did the fermenting.

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?

It is a minority variant of the French yaourt.

Yogurt was probably first discovered by Neolithic people in Central Asia and Mesopotamia around when?

That is when the first milk-producing animals were domesticated; the earliest yogurts likely fermented by chance in goatskin bags.

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

The ancient Greeks had oxygala, which Galen said was eaten with honey.

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

In 1907 it was named Bacillus bulgaricus in his country's honour.

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

He shared the 1908 Nobel Prize for discovering phagocytosis and coined the word gerontology.

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

'Danon' was little Daniel's Catalan nickname; the US arm became Dannon.

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

The Radlická Mlékárna dairy held the patent.

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

Yogurt reached the US in the 1900s in tablet form for those with digestive intolerance.

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

The Colombosians switched to 'yogurt' because customers from the eastern Mediterranean knew that word better.

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

Sales soon passed $1 million a year; General Mills bought the brand in 1993 and dropped it in 2010.

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

Higher temperatures work faster but risk a lumpy texture or whey separating.

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

Commercial 'Swiss-style' pots are often thickened with starch, pectin or gelatin and have nothing to do with Switzerland.

Straining yogurt through cloth removes what to make it thicker?

In the Middle East the result is labneh, which can be rolled into balls and kept in olive oil.

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

In North America 'Greek yogurt' simply means strained, with no legal definition at all.

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

Fage's name is both Greek for 'eat!' and the initials of Filippou Brothers Dairy Company.

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

He bought it with a Small Business Administration loan and rehired former Kraft staff.

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

Chobani grew from under 1% of the US yogurt market in 2007 to over 20% by 2021.

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

The 1965 name is a portmanteau of the member brands Yola and Coplait.

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

Minoru Shirota invented it in 1935; 'Yakult ladies' have delivered it door to door since 1963.

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

Its health claims later drew lawsuits in the EU, Canada and the US; Jamie Lee Curtis fronted US adverts from 2010.

Which country's law requires yogurt to contain at least 1 million lactobacillus CFU per millilitre?

The Codex Alimentarius sets the international definition of yogurt.

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

A 2017 Court of Justice ruling confirmed it; the US FDA likewise reserves the word for milk-derived products.

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

The ants' formic acid acidifies the milk and microbes from their bodies do the fermenting.

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

In India a starter is sometimes made with dried red chillies, which carry lactobacilli.

Lassi originated in Punjab, where it is traditionally made from the milk of which animal?

Bhang lassi, infused with cannabis, is sold legally in parts of India at Holi.

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

Mango or pineapple is sometimes added.

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

It is yogurt, water and salt, and is also hugely popular in Bulgaria.

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

It is thought to prevent thirst during the all-day fast.

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

Dried yogurt products of this kind, called kashk or qurut, stretch from Iran to Mongolia.

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

Yogurt is served there as both appetiser and dessert at festivals and weddings.

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

The tube is capped with a banana leaf and left for two days.

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

It is mentioned in Egil's saga and Grettis saga.

Kefir is made with 'grains' that resemble what?

Traditional Caucasus kefir fermented in goatskin bags hung by a doorway so passers-by would knock and mix them.

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

Geotrichum candidum grows on top; it is popular in Finland and Sweden.

Frozen yogurt was invented in which US region in the 1970s?

Its 1980s craze was revived by Pinkberry, whose founders had wanted to open a teahouse.

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

A lawsuit from rival I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! forced the change 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?

In 2007 Howard Schultz's venture fund invested $27.5 million to take the concept national.

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

Rudy Giuliani blames his high cholesterol on the supposedly non-fat yogurt at a press conference.

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

Brooks played Yogurt himself, breaking the fourth wall to plug fake merchandise.

Plain whole-milk yogurt is a rich source of which vitamin, at 31% of the Daily Value per serving?

It is about 81% water, 9% protein and 5% fat, with 97 kcal per 100 g.

Why can mould on yogurt not simply be scraped off?

Traditionally made yogurts are contaminated more often than industrial ones.

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

The claim needs at least 100 million CFU of live starter bacteria per gram.

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

Optional extras are garlic and ground walnuts; tzatziki is the thick Greek cousin.

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

Galen's note that oxygala was taken with honey mirrors how thick Greek yogurt is still served today.

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

Colombo, founded by Armenian immigrants in Massachusetts in 1929, pioneered fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt before ending its run under General Mills.

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

Once in oil the labneh balls ferment for a few more weeks, and the result is also used to stuff pies and kibbeh.

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

Yusuf Has Hajib's Kutadgu Bilig, from the same century, also mentions the word yogurt in describing Turkic nomad life.

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

It takes its name from the city of Bogura and is a recognised part of Bangladeshi culinary heritage.

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

Strictly the milk comes from the dri, the female, since the word yak refers to the male of the species.

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

It is blended with mint, mustard seeds and black rock salt, often with roasted cumin and green chilli paste added.

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

The soup is a staple of the Caucasus and is one of many dishes where yogurt is cooked rather than eaten cold.

Plain yogurt made from whole milk is roughly what percentage water?

The rest is about 9% protein, 5% fat and 4% carbohydrates, and 100 grams supplies around 97 kilocalories.

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

Because the fat globules are never broken up, a layer of cream forms on top of the pot.

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

The tablets were aimed at people with digestive trouble and at home culturing, inspired by Metchnikoff's book The Prolongation of Life.

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

The hip-fracture finding applied to post-menopausal women, though a 2011 review found the overall health evidence still thin.

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

Even with scientific endorsement, plain yogurt stayed too sour for Americans until fruit-sweetened versions arrived in 1966.

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

Lebanese and Syrian cooks also cook with yogurt in dishes such as kibbi bi laban.