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The story of yoghurt
::The origins of yoghurt date back to very ancient times; there is proof of the existence of fermented dairy products since the 3rd millennium B.C.!
We tend to think that yoghurt originally came from Bulgaria but it was actually in Turkey in the 11th century that the first yoghurts came into being. Back then it was used as a way for nomadic tribes to conserve and carry milk more easily. First they heated the milk in the sun, then they left it to thicken on animal skins. Yoghurt became widely known throughout the world due to the great migrations of tribes.
But it was François 1st, King of France from 1515 until his death in 1547, who introduced yoghurt to France on the advice of a Turkish doctor who prescribed for him a course of treatment using fermented ewe’s milk to relieve his digestion problems.
At the end of the 19th century, Elie Metchnikoff, a Russian scholar who worked at the Pasteur Institute, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1908, discovered the benefits of yoghurt and introduced them to western countries.
The first Danone yoghurts were produced in 1919, by Isaac Carrasso. They were sold through chemist’s shops and prescribed by doctors to children who, after the First World War, suffered from frequent digestive ailments, due to bad hygiene and weather conditions.
THE HARD WORDS!
Fermented ewe’s milk
Type of yoghurt eaten in Turkey in the 16th century.
