#we are about to destroy Paris Shit Germs i’m telling you

[lkluvsu]

me n bella when the game is in like 4h

[audible-smiles]

“Fear of Food: A History of Why We Worry About What We Eat” by Harvey Levenstein doesn’t really lend itself to pull quotes, so I’m going to summarize a couple of the really interesting stories for you

Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov and Yogurt

Our story begins when a Russian Jewish bacteriologist named Mechnikov flees the pogroms/May Laws in the wake of Alexander II’s assassination, and, while studying starfish in Italy, discovers that white blood cells attack and destroy foreign bacteria in the bloodstream! Its the 1880s, so this is brand new information. Very exciting. He gets pretty famous, and eventually becomes the director of the Pasteur Institute in Paris. (Yes, that Pasteur.) 

And then...

...In 1900 he loses his head entirely and starts telling people that drinking yogurt might just make them immortal. You see, he’s discovered that bad bacteria cause old age, and good bacteria cures it! The problem is that we’ve all got a lot of bad bacteria in our gut, because our large intestines are simply too large, an evolutionary holdover from when we spent so much time running from lions that we didn’t have time to stop and take a shit. (Seriously.) So now, in the modern world, all that rotten poop festers in our bowels, attracting nasty germs that make us die young- the natural life span is up to 140 years. Following me so far?

At first Dr. Mechnikov thinks we should just surgically remove that silly large intestine- and maybe most of the stomach as well- but a couple surgeons try that and people keep dying. But there’s good news! It turns out that you can solve this issue (known as ‘autointoxication’) less invasively, just by drinking This One Weird Bulgarian Beverage! Turns out all these peasants in Bulgaria live a long time, and they drink a lot of this sour milk stuff, which contains a critter that they decide to call Bacillus bulgaricus. It produces lactic acid, and your colon is apparently alkaline, so, the theory goes, maybe the acid disrupts the environment, driving out all the bad bacteria, and allowing the peasants to live well into their hundreds.

A problem: its impossible to import yogurt. But you can import preserved bacteria in tablets, which can be added to milk in order to sour it. Sounds terrible, but backed up with health claims, yogurt bacteria tablets sell well for quite a few years.

Unfortunately, Metchnikov’s timing was bad. The golden age of quack doctors and miracle cures is fading away, and the age of science is upon America. In 1906 the Pure Food and Drug Act is passed. People are paying attention to stuff like food safety and sanitation, to false health claims and additives. And then yogurt’s biggest fan goes and dies at age 71, which of course is problematic for his brand. Then this comes out:

“It...became apparent that Bulgarian herdsmen’s life spans were grossly overestimated, because fathers, sons, and grandfathers often had identical names, leading census takers to confuse the living with the dead.”

So that’s silly. But the fear of bad gut bacteria doesn’t go away. (Food fears and food fads rarely do- they just mutate, or hibernate for a while.) The middle-class American diet pre-World War I was...pretty terrible. Bland and starchy. Dyspepsia and constipation were common complaints, and some people continued to claim that sufferers were being poisoned by their own guts. Kellogg, who I mentioned in an earlier post, actually gave patients yogurt enemas. 

Autointoxication is part of the mixture of legitimate and illegitimate concerns that underlie the garbage concept of ‘toxins’ in alternative medicine today- ‘there’s bad stuff in your body and we have to get it out!’ These toxins can be nasty bacteria, food additives, industrial chemicals, or a dozen other things, depending on who you ask and what was on the news yesterday. Amazingly, you can always get rid of them by drinking some kind of weird shit.

As late as the 1930s, yogurt is still not available in America except in the form of bacteria tablets. But in 1942, a refugee from Nazi-occupied France named Daniel Carasso sets up a branch of Danone, his family’s yogurt business, in Brooklyn NY. They change their name to Dannon, and rebrand yogurt as a dessert, not a health food, to appeal to the American sweet tooth. Business starts taking off. Flavors are added. Americans think yogurt is pretty ok. Then in 1950, another health guru, this one named Gayelord Hauser, writes a diet book that includes yogurt as a ‘wonder food’ (along with wheat germ, black molasses, brewers yeast, and powdered skim milk). Yogurt sales go through the roof, and American yogurt is here to stay.

It becomes not just a dessert but a breakfast food, a snack. In the 1980s, when it is understood that fat was out to get us, low-fat yogurt reigns. In the 2000s, food marketers discover the medical term ‘probiotics’, and once again begin marketing yogurt to improve digestion. This is the age of Activia commercials.

In 2009, Dannon settles a $35 million dollar lawsuit for misleading advertising. Activia’s health claims these days are much milder than they used to be- legally, it merely ‘supports’ gut flora and ‘contributes’ to intestinal health. 

The only verified claim for the health benefits of yogurt is that it is helpful to replenish gut flora after it is decimated by prescription antibiotics, and also helps to relieve the associated symptom of diarrhea. This is a very specific circumstance. Normally, your intestines pretty much have all the bacteria they need, and of course there is no evil bacteria that makes you age. Even if there was, yogurt would not kill it. Hundreds of studies carried out over the years continue to come back with the same results- if you’re on antibiotics, eat yogurt. If you’re not, by all means continue eating yogurt, its delicious, but its not like...gonna...do anything.

Currently, thick ‘Greek’ yogurt dominates the American market. This is because sugar, not fat, is the nutritional boogeyman of the day, and the straining process that thickens yogurt removes some of the lactose, which contains sugar. Personally I don’t like the texture, and look forward to the end of both low-fat yogurt and Greek yogurt, so I can go back to buying regular old yogurt. But of course I’m sure there will be a new version of healthy yogurt along to annoy me shortly afterwards.

Food memes never die.