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Yogurt, yoghurt or whatever ‘foreigners’ want to call it - was originally invented in Turkey and named Yoğurt (after the word Yoğun, meaning dense). Of course this makes sense when you realize that yogurt is strictly milk undergoing chemical change through bacteria and becoming a more dense substance. Anyways, you might be wondering why in the world I am writing about something so ‘insignificant’ as yoğurt? Well, that attitude is the exact reason why. Today, yoğurt is (non)officially the most underrated food in the world.

You might wonder how I came to this conclusion, and there is actually two elements to it, the first one being how it is so strictly underused in most parts of the world. Yoğurt is great. No, its not just great, its freaking unbelievably amazing. I can’t believe that something as great as yoğurt exists in our world governed by laws of physics and science. Yoğurt is one of the only foods that you can include in any meal that will actually add value to your meal. Personally, I put yoğurt in practically everything that I eat. From spagetthi to rice to any meats to vegetables to really almost anything. Of course it is widely used in breakfasts, and can also function as your healthy desert. Alot of drinks are available from smoothies, to Yop, to drinks like Ayran. Yes, whether your realize it or not, yoğurt is everywhere, everyday.

Couple of eyebrows might have been raised at my use of yoğurt in main meals. In fact I was eating at a company canteen in China couple of months ago, when I had the too-good-to-be-true idea to add the yoğurt provided as a drink to the sticky dull rice that I generally find too dry to eat. Horror and shock was seen all across the cafeteria as I covered their holy rice with yoğurt - almost as if my meal would explode at these two unrelated foods combining. Well, in the end it didnt quite work out the way I had envisioned as the yoğurt was completely sweet. I ended up not eating any of it and ended up hungry, and probably moronic in the eyes of my colleagues. But trust me when I say that you really should try to combine non-sweet yoğurt with other meals. It somehow manages to make the meal more lively, balances out the food your eating to hide its flaws and complement its positive taste, and makes almost any food edible (really hot, really cold, spicy, too strong taste, too weak taste, too weird taste). Oh and it doesnt hurt that its damn healthy too.

While I can insist on how great it is to combine yoğurt in a variety of meals, most will probably be too narrow minded to give it a try. One good introduction point might be to try out this meal called Iskender. This is my favorite meal in the world and if you try it you will see many valuable aspects of yoğurt you might have never noticed before. Adding garlic to yoğurt also produces great results, but that might be a refined taste not many people are ready for. 

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So besides being this perfectly healthy, cheap, and widely usable food that improves practically any meal you eat - the second aspect that makes yoğurt the most underrated edible substance in the world is that in a land of 1.5 billion people, it is almost impossible to find. I have been living in China for 9 months now, and I naturally couldn’t help noticing the fact that natural yoğurt(no sweeteners, fruits, or any modifications) is not produced or ever consumed in China. Yes there are some imported ones from Japan, but they are priced like its some luxury product like caviar or something. This is a basic dairy product for God’s sake! Its not that China doesnt eat yogurt, they are in fact obsessed with it themselves and have aisles of different yoğurt.  Unfortunately, they have all been infested with chemicals, sugar, sweeteners, and fruit. In the end, someone like me who wishes to eat regular yoğurt on a consistent basis is unable to do so without spending a fortune getting ripped off by foreign imports.

I have had discussions on this topic with a few people and I just couldn’t understand how this was ethically, humanly, and economically possible. One argument thrown at me was this thing called ’supply and demand’…pshh, like some economic jargon was the answer I was looking for! On a serious note, I don’t understand why supply and demand would lead to this situation. Prices rise or fall when there is a discrepancy between supply and demand. However, here there is perhaps low demand but actually no supply! I reasoned that some Chinese company producing sweetened yogurt could easily make changes to their production process, and gain a monopoly in the natural yoğurt market. With the fierce competition seen in the sweetened yoğurt market, I really don’t see why this isn’t viable. Besides Turks like me, there are lots of Japanese/French and other foreigners who I imagine would like to have access to plain yoğurt below champagne prices. So I was told that I should start my own company and take advantage of this bottleneck in the market. Then, yesterday afternoon, I came across this. Fresh yoğurt delivered right to your door at decent prices! As great as this solution was, the price still seemed too high for me  - 10rmb for 125g of yoğurt? You can buy a liter of Nestle milk for that much and despite not pursuing a Maths major, I’m pretty certain that will produce more than 125 grams of yoğurt!

So I took matters into my own hands, literally, and I have started to produce my own yoğurt. Yes, I run a little yoğurt operation in my backyard apartment. It’s really not that hard actually. When my mom first taught me how to make yoğurt at home, I just scoffed at the idea, partly because I couldn’t actually believe how easy it was. You take a small portion of left over yoğurt, slowly stir it into a pot of warm milk, and just cover it up with some blankets to keep it warm - and the magic happens. After several hours you can unwrap the blankets from the pot and put it into a fridge. Voila, you just gave birth to one of the miracles of life. Frankly, as a lazy/hip/straight 22 year old, I realize that producing yoğurt might not seem like the most ‘normal’ thing to do. But hey, that’s how I roll.

So that is the story of the most underrated edible susbstance in the world. Yoğurt  is already widely used for many different applications, but the majority of people haven’t even begun to understand the power of yoğurt. Not since microwavable pizza has the world seen a food so practical. Yoğurt might have been around for thousands of years, but amidst preformed misconceptions and prejudices, and a lack of media coverage - one of the real wonders of the world has continued to pass under the radar, until now. As they say, sometimes we are looking for something so intensely that we don’t realize that its been in front of us the whole time. So next time you wonder why your life is so bland, go ahead and cook yourself a fresh batch of yoğurt, you won’t be disappointed!   

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