The story of yoghurt
Dora Kitinas-Gogos explores the history of yoghurt, its healing properties and health benefits
The popularity of yoghurt in the western world is a very recent development. Yoghurt is one of the oldest food types that man has known as it has been a staple food for thousands of years in the Middle East, Central Asia, and part of South East Asia.
Yoghurt is mentioned on tablets in Pharoic writings in Egypt and we know that the Hebrew tribes had a love for it.
The ancient Greeks also knew about yoghurt and were aware of its health benefits. The historian Herodotus (5th century BC) mentions yoghurt, as does 1st century Greek doctor, Galen of Pergamum who praised the benefits that yoghurt had on the digestive system especially the small bowel.
The Romans adapted yoghurt in their diet and Pliny the elder who also lived in the 1st century was one of its fanatic admires and users.
A scientific book that came about in Damascus in 633 AD, praises its healing properties. Without doubt yoghurt existed many years before man wrote about it. It is believed that it first appeared somewhere in the Middle East, either somewhere in the area of today's Turkey or in neighbouring Persia and there are many theories as how it first came about.
One of the most likely theories places its origins somewhere in the Neolithic era (about 10,000 BC) when man first learned to milk his herds. A clay pot of milk that sat in a warm spot for a few hours accidentally became yoghurt, the combination of the warm weather of the Middle East and the absence of hygienic surroundings gave the bacteria of the milk the ideal surroundings to develop and multiply in a natural way. Which ever way yoghurt came about it was soon realised that it was a unique way to preserve milk and it most likely did not take long to figure out that all that needed to be done to make yoghurt was to introduce a small amount of yoghurt to milk and leave in a warm position covered up most likely with animal skins, soon making yoghurt part of the staple diet of mankind in that geographical area.
It is thought that the spread of yoghurt in the Middle East and in other geographical areas came about by trade and war as well as other milk products. It is believed that it could also have come about independently in other parts of the world with similar "accidents". A Persian invasion is known to have introduced yoghurt to India where it became popular very quickly, mixed with honey and nuts and called the "food of the gods." This reminds us of something very Greek, where yoghurt with a sprinkle of walnuts and honey is the best desert today.
In the 7th century AD the nomadic central Asian tribes settled in parts of the Balkans, mostly Bulgaria and much of European Asia and bought with them the mass use of yoghurt. Later in the 1100s the huge armies of Genghis Khan as they conquered all of Asia becoming the largest empire ever to exist, used yoghurt to preserve meat that was their main diet where there was no other food source.
The entrance of yoghurt into Western Europe is said to have come about via the Ottomans. Francis I of France, suffering with acute tummy problems, found his health once again via an Istanbul healer who was sent by Suleiman the Magnificent. It is said that this soothsayer fed the king yoghurt and he began to see a difference in his digestive system and it is also said that this event was what instigated the French to call yoghurt "the food of the eternal life". The reality is that yoghurt existed in western monasteries but was not known to the rest of the western world.
The commercial spread of yoghurt in the west had roots in the Institute Pasteur from work done by Russian doctor Ilyrich Mechnikov where his studies on longevity went on to win him a Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine in 1908. He had done studies on the Bulgarian population who in the early 20th century was one of the poorest people in the world and yet they had longevity living to an average age of 87 years where as in the USA at the time the average life span was 48 years. He suggested that the health of these poor peasants in Bulgaria was due to the large quantities of Yoghurt consumed.
In his laboratory Machnikov isolated two types of bacteria that were responsible for converting milk into yoghurt creating the foundation for yoghurt to be produced commercially.
Isaac Carasso, a Jew from Thessaloniki, industrialised yoghurt after moving to Barcelona and starting a small yoghurt business in 1919. He named the business Danone and later expanded to the USA under the Americanised name of Dannon.
The majority of commercial yoghurt today is made from cow's milk but the taste varies from country-to-country and from region-to-region depending on what the animals eat. It also changes its vitamin content if made from skinny milk or milk for other animals e.g. sheep, goats or even plant milk such as soy.
Yoghurt is digested easily and quickly unlike milk, it is capable of producing Vitamin B inside the intestine. The nutritional value of yoghurt is as follows: high in protein, calcium, riboflavin, Vitamin B6 and vitamin B12. The lactose in milk converts itself into glucose and galactose and fermented lactic acid therefore making it easy for people who have light lactose intolerance. On this matter I have medical advice that the closer one consumes yoghurt to its expiry date the less lactose it contains.
I have memories of my family making yoghurt at home in Australia back in the old days where it was almost impossible to buy it commercially and I can still see the blankets covering the milk to keep it warm so it would turn into yoghurt. I have tried making it myself and found that its lighter then the commercial variety and I think tastier, but how many of us can actually be bothered?
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