Greek yogurt
Greek yogurt is generally acknowledged to be the best in the world.
This fermented milk product has nourished humankind since its
dawn and is widely considered as an elixir of youth or the secret to longevity.
Delicate, creamy, and healthful, Greek yogurt is added to soups, sauces, and desserts and is part of the Greek gastronomic identity.
Greek
Yogurt
Greek yogurt is generally acknowledged to be the best in the world.
This fermented milk product has nourished humankind since its dawn and is widely considered as an elixir of youth or the secret to longevity.
Delicate, creamy, and healthful, Greek yogurt is added to soups, sauces, and desserts and is part of the Greek gastronomic identity.
Yogurt making can be traced back to the ancient agrarian and nomadic peoples of the Balkans and the steppes of central Asia who stored camel, buffalo, goat, sheep, and cow’s milk in vessels made from animal hides or stomachs.
According to the most probable hypothesis, yogurt is the result of a shepherd’s failure to empty the milk from a goatskin sack before setting off to cross the desert. When he opened the sack a few days later, the liquid had turned into a thick mass, making the shepherd the first person to taste yogurt.
Products made from milk fermentation quickly became staple food for nomads, thanks to their nutritional value and transportability. Yogurt was also easy to make: as soon as they had consumed one sackful, all they had to do was refill it with milk and a few curds remaining from the previous batch to start the fermentation process that would transform the milk into more yogurt.
The continuous migrations of peoples from the grasslands of eastern Europe and central Asia spread yogurt westward, bringing it as far as the Mediterranean and Greece, where it became so popular that Greeks began producing their own variation, added it to several dishes, and adopted it as an inextricable element of their gastronomy.
Long before dieticians began recommending the daily consumption of yogurt, the celebrated second-century Greek physician Galen noted several of its beneficial properties, including the fact that it was more digestible than milk and more beneficial for the stomach. Dioscorides also recommended it as a medicine for liver disease, blood ailments, tuberculosis, and as a tonic.
In the 16th century, Francis I of France, who suffered from persistent diarrhea, sent for a doctor from Suleiman’s court and asked him to bring the “magic potion” used to cure the ailment in the Ottoman Empire. This potion was none other than yogurt.
The king’s health was restored and he was so impressed by yogurt that he dubbed it the “milk of eternal life.”
The first modern scientific study of yogurt wasn’t undertaken until the early 20th century when the Russian scientist Ilya Mechnikov, a pioneer in the field of immunology, observed that the Bulgarians lived longer than other Europeans despite being one of the continent’s poorest peoples.
He attributed their longevity to their dietary habits, which included the daily consumption of yogurt.
Mechnikov proved that yogurt contained bacteria that converted lactose to lactic acid thus preventing the development of harmful bacteria in the intestine during digestion.
He isolated the yogurt bacteria and dedicated himself to studying the properties of this microorganism that became known as Lactobacillus bulgaricus. He even went as far as suggesting that regular yogurt consumption could extend the human life span beyond 150 years. Thanks to these discoveries, Mechnikov was honored with the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1908 and yogurt became famous.
Although it was subsequently found that yogurt wasn’t a fountain of youth, Mechnikov was right about almost everything else. Today, experts agree that yogurt improves digestion, bowel movements, helps reduce cholesterol levels, and boosts the immune system. It’s also an excellent source of calcium, protein, fat, and the B vitamins.
