One evening when I was in high school, my dad came home from work with a couple of milk jugs. They were filled with yogurt. My dad gathered the family around in the kitchen and poured some of the goopy stuff into a small bowl for each of us.

He told us in no uncertain terms that we weren't to discuss what was going on with anyone. Then he told us to eat up.

I think it was peach flavored, but that wasn't what was weird about the yogurt. It was carbonated. Not to the same level that soda pop is--just enough to leave a little tingle on your tongue when you're done. The fact that it was a big fat secret made it all the more cool.

My dad was the director of the Technology Transfer Department at BYU, which is the department in charge of securing patents and licensing deals and collecting royalties for things that are invented at the university. Most of BYU's income in this area comes from software -- they developed some of the algorithms that are used in Adobe Photoshop, for instance.*

But this time, the director of the Food Science Department, Professor Lynn Ogden, had been playing around with dry ice left over after making homemade root beer, and he'd hit upon a new invention: carbonated yogurt.

It actually remained a big secret until my freshman year at BYU, when the BYU Creamery started selling carbonated yogurt. I bragged to my friends that I'd sampled some a couple of years earlier. But this time it came in strawberry. Of course, if I ever really wanted some fizzy goodness, I wouldn't go to the creamery--I'd just head over to my dad's office, where the fridge in the break room usually had some in stock.

My dad's job was to get some commercial yogurt producer to agree to pay BYU money in exchange for the right to produce carbonated yogurt. And while I was there at BYU, I helped him out a little bit. Well, that is to say, my dad took me and my pseudo-sister to the nation's biggest food-related convention, in Chicago. We got a cute girl in my ward and some guy I didn't know to pose for a picture, eating the yogurt, and we tried to pitch it to food companies. To no avail.**

My dad didn't have much avail in the United States for quite a while, either. He got some licensing deals done in Europe,*** but the big guns in the U.S., Dannon and Yoplait, weren't biting.

Until just recently. General Mills, which owns Yoplait, had a change of heart in the last year or so (you'll have to ask my dad, who is technically retired now but is still very involved in this, for more detail), and they have just announced their new product: Fizzix.


I'm a little bummed that it's being marketed so closely to kids and kids only, because I like it too (at least, I liked it when I was in college, the last time I tried it). I'm not sure about the drinkable yogurt thing, and I wonder how much of my love for the yogurt will remain when the extra-high quality BYU yogurt is replaced with Yoplait's "Go-gurt." But I intend to buy a package the first chance I get.

And I hope you do too. Think of it as a donation to BYU research: the more Fizzix they sell, the more royalties they have to pay to BYU.


* I have to brag about my dad here. BYU's Tech Transfer Department under his rule repeatedly was recognized as bringing in more licensing royalties per research dollar spent than any other university in the country.

** The convention wasn't a total loss, though: I got a plush Mr. Peanut from the Planter's booth that Ellie loves to this day, sang "Happy Birthday" to Ben and Jerry's, and heard the manufacturer's side of the sales pitch for those chug-a-lug milk bottles, which were just coming out at that time: "Wanna know how to sell milk for $10 a gallon?"

*** What country leads the world in per-capita yogurt consumption? Norway!