After 24 years, a BYU professor's experiment with carbonated yogurt is hitting stores nationwide.

Lynn Ogden, a professor in the College of Life Sciences, invented General Mills new product, "Fizzix." Fizzix is carbonated yogurt that was invented by Ogden at BYU in 1983 but wasn't patented until 1997 or sold until last year when General Mills picked it up.

"The idea came from making root beer for parties," Ogden said. "Me being a dairy product process man working with yogurt I thought, well, why not throw a block of dried ice in yogurt and see what happens, and the result was delightful."

At first the yogurt companies were not interested in Ogden's carbonated yogurt despite its great success in the BYU creamery from 1995 to 1996.

"No one wanted to step up at first," said Michael Alder, director of BYU's Technology Transfer Office. "It was a big risk. We patented it in 28 countries."

"We put more effort into this than any other invention here at BYU," said Lynn Astle, former director of the Technology Transfer Office.

BYU will now recieve 55% of the royalties, which will go toward BYU's mentoring program and research, while Ogden will receive the rest.

The inventing process was not a smooth and clean process either.

Once when they were carbonating the yogurt, the pressure from the CO2 caused one of the hoses to come off and the yogurt sprayed all over Ogden and the lab, he said.

Fizzix can now be found in grocery stores nation wide.



Copyright Brigham Young University 20 Sep 2007