This article was first published in Ěý
There are some stories so good to tell that one hesitates to check their accuracy. Like the one about King Francis I of France (1494-1547) being cured of his digestive problems by eating yogurt.
Suleiman the Magnificent, ruler of the Ottoman Empire with whom Francis had forged an alliance, heard about the king’s ailment and dispatched one of his court physicians to help. At the time, yogurt was already established in the Ottoman world as a “health food” and the physician prepared a special batch from ewe’s milk for the royal stomach. It cured Francis’s gastrointestinal discomfort, and ever since then yogurt has been soothing French digestive tracts and pleasing French palates.
Of course, if you are scientifically minded you should not hesitate to check sources for reliability. So, I checked. While at the time yogurt did indeed have a reputation as a medicinal preparation in the Islamic world, there is no documented evidence of Suleiman sending a physician to France.
Actually, this alluring story did not surface until the 19th century when it appeared in some popular French articles. Yogurt only become popular in France after 1904 when future Nobel laureate Élie Metchnikoff, then at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, presented a public lecture in which he speculated that certain bacteria when introduced into the human intestine generate acids that might halt the “intestinal putrefaction” that causes disease and premature death. He went on to speculate that the long life of Bulgarian peasants was due to their consumption of yogurt made by introducing bacteria into milk.
In a fashion similar to what we commonly see today, the French media blew Metchnikoff’s speculations out of proportion, with the French daily Le Temps screaming “Those of you, pretty ladies and brilliant gentlemen, who don’t want to age or die, here’s the precious recipe: eat yogurt!”
Just a year later, Bulgarian microbiologist Stamen Grigorov discovered that the basis of yogurt is a bacterium subsequently named Lactobacillus bulgaricus, still the major strain used in yogurt production today.
While the story of King Francis’s dallying with yogurt turns out to be mythical, the real story of the introduction of yogurt into Europe turns out to be even more captivating. In 1917, a huge fire started accidentally by an unattended kitchen stove consumed the central part of Salonica, a city that had been ceded to Greece by the Ottoman Empire in 1912 following the First Balkan War. Salonica at the time had a majority Jewish population dating back to 1492, when the Alhambra Decree issued by Spanish monarchs Ferdinand II and Isabella I forced Jews to either convert to Christianity or leave Spain. Most chose to leave and found refuge in Salonica ,where they became merchants, ran shipping houses, textile factories, grain and flour mills and tobacco-processing plants.
When the Great Fire broke out in 1917, most of Salonica’s 52,000 Jews lost their homes and businesses. It was then that Isaac Carasso decided to seek his fortune elsewhere and moved his family to Barcelona. Soon after their arrival, a wave of gastrointestinal illness struck the city’s children.
In Salonica, Jews had adopted some features of the Balkan diet and learned to make some staples such as yogurt, the fermented milk product that already had an aura of health. So Carasso was primed for a business opportunity when he heard about the yogurt craze in France and England sparked by Metchnikoff’s speculations about intestinal welfare.
Maybe, Carasso thought, the children’s distress could be curbed by treatment with yogurt. He began by making a batch at home that he packaged in small ceramic pots and convinced pharmacies to sell it as a health tonic. The product needed a name, and he came up with “Danone,” the Catalan nickname for his son Daniel. That turned out to be auspicious because Daniel went on to study bacteriology at the Pasteur Institute and eventually took over the company, launching a French branch in 1929.
When the Nazis occupied France during the Second World War, Daniel fled to the U.S. and founded a yogurt company there as well. He changed the name to “Dannon,” thinking this had more of an English ring to it. Business floundered as Americans didn’t take to the sour taste. Then Daniel came up with what turned out to be a brilliant idea. He added strawberry purée to the yogurt and American tastebuds frolicked.
The company grew by leaps and bounds and after merging with a cheese producer and a glass and beverage company, it was rechristened as “Groupe Danone.” It is now an international giant food conglomerate that produces various yogurts, plant milks, bottled water, infant formulas and medical nutrition products. Yogurt, in various incarnations, is still the company’s chief product with health claims being made on its behalf. There is no piggybacking on Metchnikoff’s anti-aging claims, but gastrointestinal welfare as suggested by Isaac Carraso is promoted.
Much is made of the inclusion of Bifidus regularis bacteria in Activia, one of the company’s main products, although the original claim that Activia is “clinically proven to regulate your digestive system in two weeks” was abandoned after the Federal Trade Commission in the U.S. said that this was deceptive because there was no such clinical evidence. Several class-action suits were settled by the manufacturer, and the “clinically proven” claim was replaced by the softer “clinical studies show that …”ĚýIndeed, some randomized trials have shown that this yogurt modestly speeds up colonic transit, reduces bloating and increase stool frequency in some people with mild constipation. But it takes three servings a day to reap these minor benefits.Ěý
Today, the claims are even more sedate and ambiguous with the label simply stating “supports gut health.” Added health benefits are implied by including fruit such as blueberries, but a back-of-the-envelope calculation approximates four to six processed blueberries per serving, an amount unlikely to have any clinical benefit.
Metchnikoff’s claims of yogurt preventing aging were far-fetched, but he was right about the possible gastrointestinal benefits that sparked Isaac Carraso’s interest and eventually resulted in the founding of the company that is now the world’s largest yogurt producer.
Checking the King Francis story did turn up a historical item that does have evidence. It was Francis who after Leonardo da Vinci’s death acquired the Mona Lisa for the royal collection. She now hangs in the Louvre entertaining the adoring crowds. There are too many stories to check about her emotionally ambiguous expression.
