Welcome to The Dairy Mail

by Liza Burger

Amasi has long since surpassed the notion of being a traditional dairy food that could only be found brewing in calabashes in the most rural parts of South Africa. Although its roots will remain in our local tribes’ culinary traditions, it is a full-fledged commercial dairy product found in any supermarket, spaza shop or corner café.

For the uninitiated, amasi is a cultured product made from full cream milk. Before becoming commercially available, home-brewed amasi bacterial cultures came mainly from a ‘lucky packet’ of microorganisms present in unpasteurised milk and the insides of the calabash or clay pot it was made in.

Today, culture is added to the milk and the mixture is fermented until it reaches a pH of between 3,6 and 4,2. It is unsweetened, has a smooth texture, is a bit thicker than yoghurt and has a slightly sour taste. The modern, more controlled way of making amasi, means that food safety protocols are adhered to.

It is especially the older generation of South Africans who grew up enjoying amasi (in Zulu and Xhosa), mafi (Sotho) and maas, dikmelk or kalbasmelk (Afrikaans) mostly as part of their breakfast meal.

While urbanisation has greatly influenced diets, this traditional dairy food has readjusted itself quite successfully. With dairy processors realising the commercial value of this traditional product, amasi has now grown past its reference as a ‘rural’ snack to a regular item in the shopping basket of millions of South Africans.

Traditional recipe
Amasi is traditionally believed to give Zulu men extra strength, make them healthy and desirable. It is customary to make traditional amasi in a clay pot or calabash from unpasteurised milk, where-after it is left at ambient temperature to ferment for a few days. The fermenting milk produces a watery substance called umlaza, with the remainder being amasi. It is typically enjoyed with mieliepap or on its own.

In rural areas, amasi is still used to help babies recover from diarrhoea and it is believed that amasi may be an ideal vehicle to supply probiotics in the diet.

Commercialising amasi has brought normal food safety and hygiene regulations, including pasteurisation into the process and necessitated the use of cultures such as Lactococcus lactis subspecies lactis and L. lactis subspecies cremoris. It takes 12 to 18 hours to ferment at 20 to 30°C before it is ready to be bottled. Once packaged, modern amasi has a shelf life of about 21 days if stored at a temperature of 4°C.

There might also be more to amasi’s popularity than purely tradition.

Research suggests that some black African tribes may prefer amasi to other dairy products owing to a natural lactase deficiency, which causes lactose intolerance. This ethnic disposition to produce less lactase enzyme with age is more common in people of Asian, Southern European and African heritage. Factors that affect lactose intolerance can also include social and cultural habits and attitudes, socio-economic status and geographical location.

Lactase is an enzyme that helps the body digest lactose. If the body is lactase deficient, the ability to digest and absorb lactose diminishes and can result in lactose intolerance.

The fermentation process partially breaks down the lactose, in a way helping the consumer digest milk much easier.

Sharing the world’s taste
Whether you refer to cheese, buttermilk, yoghurt or amasi – the fermentation of milk and the making of these products are known and loved around the world.

In an article published on www.dairy­reporter.com it refers to a recent survey stating that yoghurt is currently the fastest growing dairy product among consumers in the UK. It is ­obviously not only South Africans that love their fermented milk.

According to The Dairy Market 2010 report, published in May, the yoghurt, fromage frais and yoghurt drinks market in the UK was estimated at £1 685 million (R200 million) in 2009. The reason for the growth curve, according to the report, is yoghurt’s image as a healthy product.

Interestingly enough, the way amasi is made, is duplicated almost in every country in the world in one way or another. Although these are all variations on our own amasi, the kefir of the Caucasus region, Sauermilch of Germany, India’s lassi and karnemelk from Holland will all taste familiar to the amasi connoisseur.

Locally, the price difference between yoghurt and amasi and the historical and cultural background of amasi, will probably continue to benefit this traditional African product.

Serving up
Marketing this dairy drink seems to be no problem, as the amasi market is firm and growing among especially the lower and middle income groups. The traditional rich yellow colour of amasi is replicated in the packaging of most dairy processors. As a matter of fact, the typical yellow-beige containers in different volumes mostly exceed any other fermented products in the warehouses of dairy companies to answer the demand for amasi. However, the success story of amasi lies much deeper than clever packaging, marketing and spot-on distribution.

Amasi is one of the reasonably affordable types of food that families on a small budget can afford. With South Africa having one of the highest HIV infection rates in the world, good nutrition plays an enormous role.

The high nutritional value has also seen it to be included on some schools’ feeding scheme menus as a means of combating malnutrition and improving children’s nutritional status.

It is also recommended by the department of health to include amasi in the diets of children who seem to be lactose intolerant or suffer from diarrhoea.

Research continues
While amasi and its international equivalents already have won over the consumer for centuries, the scientific community is continuing research into the goodness of this dairy product.

Research into the probiotic and lactic acid functionality of a fermented dairy product have landed Irish, Finnish and American researchers the International Dairy Federation’s (IDF) Elie Metchnikoff prize for 2010. The prizewinners were chosen based on the impact of their discovery in terms of contribution to science, as well as how the research will influence products on the market.

The work of Finnish dairy probiotics researchers, Seppo Salminen and Erika Isolauri, showed that probiotic-supplemented peri-natal dietary counselling could be a safe and cost-effective tool to combat allergies and inflammatory disease in children.

Prof Todd Klaenhammer from the US was awarded the prize in biotechnology for his research into the industrial application of molecular genetics to food grade lactic acid bacteria, which focuses on the design of new genetic strategies to provide bacteriophage resistance to dairy starter cultures.

Lastly, the collaborative work of Irish researchers Paul Ross, Catherine Stanton, Gerald Fitzgerald and Colin Hill on the mechanistic basis of lactic acid bacteria and probiotic functionality, won the microbiology prize.