One of the few documented examples.
She was born in 1907 in San Francisco
Decades ago, I read articles in newspapers and magazines about the remarkable people of some Eastern European village who lived to be very old and attributed this to their high consumption of yogurt. It wasn’t scientifically proven, and later, some sources claimed that the birthdates of the people were undocumented.
Alas, even if yogurt has life-extending properties, I could never develop a taste for it, even though I eat a lot of dairy products.
A Science Lecture Accidentally Sparked a Global Craze for Yogurt
The Scientist Who Started the Yogurt Longevity Craze
The entire media phenomenon came largely from the work of the Nobel-winning biologist:
- Élie Metchnikoff
While working at the Pasteur Institute around 1904, he proposed a theory:
- Aging is caused partly by toxic bacteria in the colon.
- Lactic-acid bacteria from fermented milk (yogurt) suppress these microbes.
- Bulgarian peasants lived longer because they consumed yogurt daily.
His ideas spread rapidly through the press and triggered a yogurt craze across Europe and America. Yogurt shops even opened in Paris, selling fermented milk as an “anti-aging” food.
"Articles often focused on villages in the Rhodope Mountains of Bulgaria or the Caucasus region, claiming unusually high numbers of people over 100.
Examples often cited included:
Mountain villages in southern Bulgaria
Caucasus communities in Georgia and Armenia
Central Asian pastoral populations
Researchers noted that these populations consumed large amounts of fermented dairy products, particularly yogurt.
- Why Later Researchers Became Skeptical
By the mid-20th century, historians and demographers began re-examining the claims and found problems:
Common issues:
Poor birth records
Many villagers had no documented birth dates.
Name duplication
Some studies suggested multiple people with the same name were mistakenly counted as the same individual.
Exaggerated ages
Ages reported to visitors were sometimes socially or culturally inflated.
Other lifestyle factors
Even if longevity was real, factors likely included:
physically active rural lifestyles
low-calorie diets
low pollution
strong social networks