Who invented fruit on the bottom yogurt

Join Grub Street as we look back at the good, the bad, and the Go-gurt. Wallace sends a letter to Hungarian bacteriologist Stephen A. Gaymont inviting him to the United States on a special visa for scientists. Young yogurt entrepreneur named Juan Metzger mounts a campaign to market yogurt as an ideal meat substitute. It does not succeed. But Metzger later pioneers the practice of packing fruit at the bottom of yogurt containers to offset its acidic taste.

Dannon takes off. Seeking to uphold the central mystery of its newest market, an industry rep tells Florence Fabricant that frozen yogurt could not be made at home. There have been distinct eras in yogurt tastes, from Greek to Icelandic to nondairy, and each one offers a glimpse into the ingredients, diets, and narratives people were buying into at the time.

Sure, yogurt is just one product in a sea of groceries. But it tells a compelling, complete story about the American diet. In Europe, it was a fridge staple meant for snacking or eating for breakfast — plain, tart, and creamy, often adorned with some berries.

In the US, though, it would be a while before yogurt achieved that same staple status. In the post-World War II era of rations and cans and boxed mixes and TV dinners, people had a predisposition for foods that were convenient, easily consumed, and often high in sugar. Owing in part to a popular Dannon ad campaign from featuring older people saying the secret to their vitality was yogurt, Americans gradually began to regard it as a health food.

In , yogurt was being marketed to kids in the form of products like sprinkle-topped Sprinklins, which Palantoni helped pioneer. Yogurt was marketed equally aggressively to women, because they were seen not only as the primary shoppers in the house, but also as diet-conscious. Advertisements showed women eating spoonfuls of yogurt at the spa bedecked in plush white robes, and ogling at a raspberry cheesecake before realizing excitedly that there was a raspberry cheesecake flavored yogurt.

Spoiler alert: It tastes nothing like raspberry cheesecake. As a result of all this, the yogurt business suddenly exploded. Everyone from kids to adults was eating it. Got Milk ads were in full swing, which only bolstered the appeal. A single word can define American dietary preferences of the early s: protein. It was the magical nutrient that could keep you both satisfied and trim. Meal replacement bars suggesting they had enough protein to keep you full all day were getting big.

Muscle Milk was a body-building staple. It was in this protein-obsessed environment that Greek yogurt — a thick, strained version of the original — was able to not just succeed but completely dominate the yogurt market. There had been attempts at introducing Greek to the broader market. Fage, with its ultra-thick Greek yogurt, was gaining popularity, but it was pricey, and it had a tart taste. Americans still loved sugar — the protein shakes and protein bars were loaded with it.

The brand that was able to break through was Chobani, started by Hamdi Ulukaya, who came from a family of dairy farmers in Turkey. But most importantly, Chobani pushed the protein messaging hard, and became seen as a healthier choice than all the other sugar-laden yogurt brands. Because of the protein angle, Greek yogurt prompted advertising to finally shift away from focusing exclusively on women.

But many of us probably haven't put a second thought into how the fruit got where it is, let alone how it got there at all in the first place. Do you stir it all together or scoop it out one layered spoonful at a time? So, too, was plain yogurt rather divisive when it was first introduced to the American diet by Dannon in In fact, Fruit on the Bottom was intended to unite Americans around what was then considered foreign to their palate but is now known as a staple of American fridges.

Originally known as Danone and still known that way to the rest of the world , the Bronx-based yogurt company first opened its doors in with the goal of selling only plain, unsweetened yogurt. As American tastebuds favored food on the sweeter end of the spectrum, getting new customers to purchase the yogurt proved difficult. Those cups were then hand-delivered to local cafeterias and pharmacies in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan.

To grow sales, around Carasso introduced a concept that had already been around in Europe: fruit compote.