Australians knew about yoghurt long before they began to eat it. In 1905, many local newspapers reported on a substance purported to prolong life, by destroying bad bacteria in the gut. The theory was developed by Professor Élie Metchnikoff of the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Described as “curdled milk of a special kind” and prepared to a special Bulgarian recipe, it was yoghurt. Metchnikoff suggested that Bulgarians, who ate a great deal of the substance, were more likely to live longer than other Europeans. Both the longevity of Bulgarians and the contribution of yoghurt to long life turned out to be myths.
The 1905 articles were scathing about the taste of the miracle food:
The substance looks very like ordinary cream cheese gone bad, and tastes similarly. The solid portion is mixed with a white, thin liquid, which is exceedingly sour. People who wish to live to 100 breakfast off yahurt [sic] exclusively. A correspondent who has tried it says he would prefer to die young.
The lactobacillus isolated by Metchnikoff as the basis of Bulgarian yoghurt was soon being marketed in powder and tablet form by the Société le Ferment of Paris, which opened an outlet in Pitt Street, Sydney, in 1912, and further depots in Melbourne, Brisbane, Fremantle, Perth and Auckland. In addition to allowing people to make their own life-extending yoghurt, the tablets were widely recommended to alleviate scouring in calves.
We don’t hear much about yoghurt for the next three decades, except for a story or two about its use by foreign celebrities who were disciples of the American health and diet guru, Gayelord Hauser. As the 1950s dawned, however, The Argus in Melbourne was calling it the newest health craze. “A city shop is selling it to nearly 1000 people a week,” they gasped. (Since there were more than 1.3 million people in Melbourne at the time, “craze” may have been something of an overstatement) It’s not clear who was making it, although the article reported that Melbourne manufacturers were mixing the culture with fresh, powdered or condensed milk.
For the first few years of the 1950s, it seems yoghurt was supplied through some delicatessens and specialty health food shops, including the Naytura Foodatorium in Melbourne and The Pantry in Hobart. European immigrants were delighted to discover something from home. It was sold, as one of Gayelaud Hauser’s “wonder foods” along with black molasses, skim milk powder, wheat germ and powdered brewer’s yeast, in John Martin’s food hall in Adelaide. But for most, it was just confused with sour milk.
In 1954, we see the earliest advertising for a commercial yoghurt brand. The man behind it was Bob Irvine, of the Illawarra-based Dairy Farmers Co-operative Milk Co. Ltd. Irvine is credited with several innovations at Dairy Farmers, including flavoured milks, plain and fruit yoghurts, sour cream and cottage cheese. The first advertisement (seen above) had yoghurt as a mere footnote, available in 8-oz. cartons from milk suppliers. The Australian Women’s Weekly discovered yoghurt in 1958, recommending it as a “food that slims you”.
The 1960s saw the beginnings of yoghurt as a mainstream food. In 1967, Dairy Farmers acquired the Australian rights to market Ski, a brand developed by the British company Express Dairies and the first yoghurt to contain real fruit pieces. The Dairy Farmers launch was quickly followed by the arrival of competitive products from rival dairy companies, Petersville and Bega Cheese. In December 1967, a South Australian newspaper, The Coromandel, reported a marked year-on-year increase in yoghurt sales:
Demand for yoghurt which used genuine fruit pieces to enhance the flavour, had shown the biggest increase. The changing dietary habits of the population were partly responsible for the favourable uplift in sales, and this was reflected in the increasing demand for low-fat yoghurt.
Sales trundled along until the early 1980s, when the top-selling French brand, Yoplait, came to Australia. It was a game changer. Writing in The Financial Review in 1990, Neil Shoebridge reported:
The explosion in yoghurt sales has been driven by two French brands: Yoplait and Danone. Yoplait, owned by the French food maker Sodima and made here under licence by Plumrose (a division of the Danish trading group, East Asiatic Company of Copenhagen), was launched into the then moribund Australian yoghurt market in September 1982. Two months later, it had grabbed 18.5% of yoghurt sales and leapfrogged well-established rivals such as Allowrie Farmers’ Peters Farm brand and Australian Co-operative Foods’ Ski, to take the number one spot in the market.
By 1986-87, Yoplait held 40-45% of the Australian yoghurt market and had contributed to a 100% jump in yoghurt sales. In 1988, QUF mounted a challenge to Yoplait with the launch of Danone, the world’s top-selling yoghurt brand, which is owned by the big French food and beverage group BSN.
The article suggested that, in 1990, Danone had a market share of 17%, with Yoplait capturing 35% of sales, Ski 16% and Peters Farm 11%. The decades since have seen many new players in the yoghurt market, including Tamar Valley, Chobani, Farmers Union, Procal, Jalna, Coles, Woolworths, Activia, Vaalia, Coyo and Lyttos by Aldi. We’ve come a long way from “cream cheese gone bad”.