Free Republic

40 students across Victoria are participating in a program that will deliver yoghurt cultures to the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday, via a SpaceX rocket. The rocket, a Falcon 9, is set to launch at 5.06am US eastern time on Tuesday – just after 9pm Australian eastern time – from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A team of six students at Haileybury, an independent high school in Melbourne, are working with Swinburne researchers to study the effects of microgravity on bacteria. They hope to perfect the conditions under which astronauts could make their own yoghurt. A total of...

Residue on 7,200 year old pottery found in Croatia has pushed back the dawn of cheese making in the Mediterranean. The find resets the timeline of agriculture in the region, with fermented dairy products being made a mere five centuries after milk was first stored. But its innovation was more than just a culinary milestone for dairy connoisseurs – it could have been a life saver. … Archaeological data shows people have been growing crops and raising livestock in the region for roughly 8,000 years. Impressed Ware, named for the simple shell-like impressions used to decorate the clay. They form...

Ever wonder why the federal government would be sending hundreds of foreign refugees to a relatively small town in Idaho? Wonder no more. They’re sent there, many of them, to work in the world’s largest yogurt factory. As WND previously reported, Twin Falls is in line to receive about 300 refugees this year, many of them Muslims from Syria. And the state of Idaho, despite its reputation as a mostly white, conservative farm state, has been a popular destination for refugees in recent years. Boise Mayor David Bieter has gone on record as a huge supporter of President Obama’s welcoming...

On New Year’s Day in 1988, Abdullah Ali, an Iraqi businessman who had been living in London for eight years, joined three compatriots for dinner at a restaurant called Cleopatra in Notting Hill.The next morning, he was taken ill with flu-like symptoms and was admitted to hospital. There his condition rapidly deteriorated — his hair fell out, he developed excruciating skin and joint pain, and paralysis and respiratory failure began to set in. Fifteen days later he was dead — but not before he had begun to wonder whether something had been added to his vodka. He was right: the...

Would you buy your organic yoghurt from one of these hunky Somerset farmers?

Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Eating low-fat yoghurt whilst pregnant can increase the risk of your child developing asthma and allergic rhinitis (hay fever), according to recent findings. The study will be presented at the European Respiratory Society's (ERS) Annual Congress in Amsterdam on 25 September 2011. All the abstracts for the ERS Congress will be publicly available online from today (17 September 2011). The study aimed to assess whether fatty acids found in dairy products could protect against the development of allergic diseases in children. The researchers assessed milk and dairy intake during pregnancy and monitored the prevalence of asthma and...

It's a bit like our Lassi Festival. Ok, so we don't have a Lassi Festival, but the lines of people winding their way up to the Drepung monastery to celebrate Shoton, the Tibetan Yogurt Festival, have all the signs of a Kumbh. Most of those walking from Lhasa in the 6.20 am darkness are pilgrims to In Tibet, only Lonely Planet carries a statutory warning Drepung, some 20 minutes by road from central Lhasa. The remainder are like Confucian me are curious folks getting a glimpse into the heart of Tibetan culture in Tibet. The climb up the steps, not...

A Greek man has sued a dairy firm in southern Sweden after his picture ended up on a Turkish yoghurt product. The man whose picture adorns the Turkish yoghurt product, manufactured by Lindahls dairy in Jönköping, argues that the company does not have permission to use his image. He has now sued Lindahls for 50 million kronor ($6.9 million), according to Sveriges Radio (SR) Jönköping.

MOMCHILOVTSI, Bulgaria (Reuters) - Lactobacillus bulgaricus sounds like a nasty infectious disease but the organism that curdles milk may be the reason Maria Shopova recently celebrated her 100th birthday. Unaware that she may owe her longevity to the friendly bacterium, Maria grins, unveiling her two remaining teeth, and explains: "It's luck given by God". The lively centenarian, who kept a cow until she was 80, has lived on dairy products -- yoghurt in particular -- most of her life in the picturesque mountain village of Momchilovtsi in southern Bulgaria. The Balkan country proudly claims to have invented yoghurt and given...

<p>Cheap and versatile, widely acclaimed for its nutritional benefits and a central component of some of the world's great cuisines, plain yogurt has nevertheless failed to win many converts in America. It's watery, detractors complain, and too sharp.</p> <p>So we package it with fruit and flavorings in an effort to make it more like pudding, or sweeten it and freeze it in an attempt to ape ice cream.</p>