When Siggi Hilmarsson founded his company in 2004, Americans weren’t thinking critically about food like they do today. Popular foods trends like juicing and paleo diets were nonexistent compared to the mainstream acceptance they experience now. Today’s staples like quinoa, sriracha and kale weren’t yet on the menu. It was during this very different time in food consciousness that Himarsson introduced his Icelandic-style yogurt, called “skyr” and characterized for its thickness and creaminess, to his new home in America. Call Hilmarsson a culinary vanguard or not, but he’s been making thick, protein-rich and low-sugar yogurt long before today’s multifarious Greek and good-for-you yogurt brands crowded grocery shelves.
Hilmarsson, 39, moved from his native Iceland to the United States to study economics and business at Columbia Business School in New York City, but, by this time, he had already started thinking critically about food. “After graduation I got a corporate job [at Deloitte] that I didn’t really like and I started making yogurt as a hobby because I missed eating skyr from home,” he says. Skyr is similar to Greek yogurt because they are both characterized as “strained,” which means whey (a watery byproduct) is taken out during the process. This practice requires four times more milk than it takes to make regular yogurt, which makes it more expensive to produce, but it results in a thicker yogurt with a much higher protein content.
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