Dairy products are nutritionally indispensable, consumed daily and one of the most desired foods by a large part of the world population.
Fermented milk is very useful for many reasons. The related products have a prolonged shelf life; they are safe because lactic acid bacteria (LAB) act as preservatives and inhibit the development of pathogenic microflora, they are extremely suitable for the absorption of nutrients from milk, and they are beneficial due to the health impact of lactic acid bacteria on various body functions [1].
According to Rul (2017), traces of fermented milk products (milk lipids discovered on clay vessels) have been found as early as 8000 B.C. in Asia Minor and Eastern Europe, soon after the domestication of milk-producing animals (cows, sheep, and goats) [2]. Evidence of kefir consumption was found in China in a Bronze Age tomb [3]. The first dairy products resembling yoghurt were invented around 5000–6000 B.C. in Mesopotamia [1]. Located on the Balkan Peninsula, between Western Europe and the Middle East, at this time the Bulgarian lands were inhabited by various ancient communities, with their typical material culture including fermented food traditions. The climate in Bulgaria is especially suitable for animal dairy husbandry. Bone fragments, collected from Azmashka Neolithic village (near Stara Zagora, 6000 B.C.), belonged to 118 cattle, 73 sheep, and 27 goats [4]. Historians believe that the Thracian tribe Bizalti (who inhabited today’s lands of Shumen, Targovishte and Varna) were the first to start purposefully preparing fermented dairy products [5]. Another direction in the search for the origin of lactic acid dairy fermentation is offered by the descriptions of the Greek historian Herodotus, according to whom the Scythians (nomadic tribes living between the rivers Dnieper and Don) consumed sour milk. Mare’s fermented milk was also used by the proto-Bulgarians for food, and stored in leather bags made of stomachs. The resulting product was called koumiss and was a staple food during military campaigns. The Slavs are known to have consumed sura, a product obtained by placing yoghurt in wooden barrels in the summer and consuming it in the winter by liquefying it with drinking water. When the ancient Bulgarians rediscovered sheep’s yoghurt used by the Thracians and Slavs, it became preferable to mare’s milk. The observation that fermented dairy products are beneficial for human health dates back to their invention since it is described in Indian Ayurvedic scripts from about 6000 B.C. [6]. In Europe, the healing effects of Bulgarian yoghurt have been known since at least 1542, when the French King Francois I was cured of chronic diarrhoea by a simple yoghurt diet [2]. However, the discovery of yoghurt microbiota (as a cause of yoghurt fermentation) happened only in the 20th century. In 1905, Stamen Grigorov, a Bulgarian medical student in Geneva, Switzerland, was the first to describe the rod-shaped lactic acid bacterium (named Bacillus bulgaricus Grigoroff), accompanied by a spherical Streptococcus, in Bulgarian yoghurt [7]. Based on Grigorov’s findings, in 1909 the Russian biologist and Nobel Prize winner Elie Metchnikoff, developing his theory about the prolongation of life, was the first who proposed that daily yoghurt consumption engenders the longevity of the Bulgarian peasant population, especially in the mountainous regions. Metchnikoff suggested that there is a connection between the consumption of yoghurt and the number of Bulgarian centenarians. He further proposed the hypothesis that the inhibition of harmful food fermentation in the gut can delay the process of ageing. At the heart of his research is lactic acid, which reduces the number of putrefactive microorganisms [7,8]. Then, the benefits of yoghurt consumption were widespread in Europe by doctors, pharmacologists and journalists, which led to a general demand for yoghurt as a medicine in the first third of the 20th century, for instance, against “food neophobia” and other gastrointestinal disorders. In the period 1909–1912, physicians and bacteriologists Guéguen, Bulloch, Vaughan, Hertz, and Lane independently of each other discussed the therapeutic nature of the “lactic acid bacillus”, and as a result, Danone’s company distributed its yoghurt through the city pharmacies of Barcelona in 1912, followed by entering the French yoghurt market in 1923 [7]. Today, more than 45 bln metric tons (MT) of fresh dairy products are consumed annually in Europe. In 2019, 6.4 bn MT of cheese and 6.1 bn MT of yoghurt were produced by the countries of the European Union. Bulgarian dairies processed 663,644,000 L of raw milk in 2020, 94.3% of which was cow’s milk. In comparison to the other EU countries, the obtained genuine yoghurt (156,610 MT) and white brined cheese (899 MT) in Bulgaria were in limited quantities, but they are known for their very high quality [9].
Product | Starter Strains | Accompanying Microflora | Reference |
---|---|---|---|
Yoghurt | L. delbrueckii ssp. bulgaricus, S. thermophilus | L. helveticus, L. paracasei, L. fermentum, Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus, Leuc. mesenteroides, Leuc. pseudomesenteroides, W. confusa, P. acidilactici, Lc. lactis, Ent. faecium | [10,39,40,41] |
White brined cheese | Lc. lactis ssp. lactis, L. casei, L. delbrueckii ssp. bulgaricus, S. thermophilus | L. plantarum, L. paraplantarum, L. pentosus, L. paracasei ssp. paracasei, Lentilactobacillus hilgardii, L. brevis, Leuconostoc spp., Ent. faecium, Ent. durans | [49,50,51,52] |
Kashkaval | Lc. lactis ssp. lactis, Lc. lactis ssp. cremoris, L. delbrueckii ssp. bulgaricus, L. helveticus, S. thermophilus | Leuc. mesenteroides, L. lactis ssp. lactis biovar. diacetylactis, Enterococcus spp. | [53,54,55] |
Katak | L. delbrueckii ssp. bulgaricus, S. thermophilus | L. delbrueckii ssp. delbrueckii, L. delbrueckii ssp. lactis, P. acidilactici, P. pentosaceus, Enterococcus ssp. |
[25,56] |
Kefir | L. kefiranofaciens, Lentilactobacillus kefiri, Lentilactobacillus buchneri, L. plantarum, L. amylovorus, Levilactobacillus brevis, L. casei, L. paracasei, L. crispatus, Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, L. helveticus, L. parakefiri, L. satsumensis, L. uvarum, S. thermophilus, Lc. lactis ssp. cremoris, Lc. lactis ssp. lactis, Kluyveromyces marxianus, K. lactis | Leuc. lactis, Leuc. mesenteroides, Acetobacter fabarum, A. lovaniensis, A. syzygii, Ent. faecium, Gluconobacter japonicus, Weissella spp., Halococcus spp., Candida inconspicua, Dysgonomonas spp., Geotrichum candidum, Kazachstania aerobia, Kz. exigua, Kz. unispora, Lachancea meyersii, Pelomonas spp., Pichia fermentans, P. guilliermondii, P. kudriavzevii, Sacch. cerevisiae, Sacch. martiniae, Sacch. turicensis, Sacch. unisporus, Shewanella spp. | [57,58,59,60,61] |
Koumiss | L. acidophilus, L. helveticus, Ligilactobacillus salivarius, S. thermophilus, K. lactis | L. buchneri, L. plantarum, Leuconostoc spp., Sacch. lactis, Sacch. unisporus, Torula kumiss | [34,35,36,62] |
This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/microorganisms9030480