In an abstract from her essay published in Gastronomica, which calls itself The Journal of Critical Food Studies, a leftist professor posits that the reason Greek yogurt has become so popular is because it’s white. The author, one Perin Gurel, also intimates that white Americans had a prejudice against yogurt because it had Middle Eastern origins.
That’s not all; Gurel believes that yogurt was viewed as a “strange and foreign food” by Americans until the mid-twentieth century, at which point the dairy industry “adopted a postfeminist ethos,” seizing upon the “intersectional processes of feminization and de-exoticization.”
Gurel explains that not only were white females lured into buying yogurt, but the fact that yogurt had dreaded “connections to the Middle east” was obscured by foregrounding a nonthreatening “white” ethnicity.
According to statista.com:
Greek yogurt is … known as strained yogurt. Through the straining process, the excess watery whey is removed, which gives the yogurt a much thicker and creamier consistency … As of 2014, the category held a share of over 50 percent of the U.S. yogurt market, up from about 4 percent in 2008 … The Greek yogurt category experienced tremendous growth in the United States over the past few years. Dollar sales of Greek yogurt amounted to about 3.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2015, up from 391 million U.S. dollars in 2010.
Gurel received her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 2010; she currently serves as Assistant Professor of American Studies; Concurrent Assistant Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Notre Dame. In 2016 she wrote the multimedia essay “Representing Muslims and Islam in the Sanders campaign.” In 2012 she organized a conference titled, “Beyond Islamophobia: Islam and American Empire.”