Isaac Carasso (1874 – 19 April 1939) was a member of the prominent

Sephardic Jewish Sephardic Jews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, and rarely as Iberian Peninsular Jews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the historic Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and their descendant ...

Carasso (Karasu) family of Ottoman

Salonica Thessaloniki (; ), also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, Salonika, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece (with slightly over one million inhabitants in its Thessaloniki metropolitan area, metropolitan area) and the capital cit ...

(modern Thessaloniki, Greece). After emigrating to

Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

, he started a

yogurt Yogurt (; , from , ; also spelled yoghurt, yogourt or yoghourt) is a food produced by bacterial Fermentation (food), fermentation of milk. Fermentation of sugars in the milk by these bacteria produces lactic acid, which acts on milk protein to ...

factory which later became

Groupe Danone Danone S.A. () is a French multinational food-products corporation based in Paris. It was founded in 1919 in Barcelona, Spain. It is listed on Euronext Paris, where it is a component of the CAC 40 stock market index. Some of the company's produ ...

Biography

Carasso was born in

in 1874. In 1916, after the

Balkan Wars The Balkan Wars were two conflicts that took place in the Balkans, Balkan states in 1912 and 1913. In the First Balkan War, the four Balkan states of Kingdom of Greece (Glücksburg), Greece, Kingdom of Serbia, Serbia, Kingdom of Montenegro, M ...

, he moved his family to

. He noticed that many young children suffered from digestive and intestinal problems. Inspired by the work of

Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov Ilya, Iliya, Ilia, Ilja, Ilija, or Illia ( , or ; ; ) is the East Slavic form of the male Hebrew name Eliyahu (Eliahu), meaning "My God is Yahu/ Jah." It comes from the Byzantine Greek pronunciation of the vocative (Ilía) of the Greek Eli ...

, who had popularized sour milk as a health food, and recalling that such health conditions were treated with

in the

Balkans The Balkans ( , ), corresponding partially with the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throug ...

, he imported cultures from Bulgaria or used "pure cultures that had been isolated in Paris" at Mechnikov's laboratory at the

Institut Pasteur The Pasteur Institute (, ) is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, who invented pasteurization and vaccines for anthrax and rabies. T ...

. Since yogurt was not well known then in Western Europe, he initially sold it as a medicine, through pharmacies. In 1919, he founded the company which would later become

in Barcelona when he opened a small yogurt business named "Danone", a variation on the nickname of his son, Daniel. Carasso perfected the first industrial process for making yogurt. His son Daniel Carasso took over the family business in Spain and established Danone in France and later in the United States (as Dannon). Carasso died in

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

in 1939.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Carasso, Isaac Sephardi Jews from the Ottoman Empire 20th-century Spanish Jews 20th-century Spanish businesspeople Jews from Thessaloniki 1874 births 1939 deaths Spanish company founders Groupe Danone people Greek emigrants Immigrants to Spain