What was an anecdote has become a real craze. The Catalan cooperative lives a madness to the point that in a single week they have received the same amount of queries as in a whole year, as they explain in a report of the Ser.
And orders have skyrocketed. In just fifteen days, they have registered 80,000 more requests for yogurt units.
The “Branyas Effect”: the science behind the boom
But where does this fever come from? The origin was a study by the Josep Carreras Institute on healthy longevity. Analyzing the case of Maria Branyas, the scientists revealed the most brutal fact: at 117 years of age, the super-grandmother had a microbiota “like that of a child”.
Someone connected the dots: Maria Branyas ate La Fageda yogurts. And the fuse was lit. But is this yogurt the fountain of eternal youth? Dr. Xavier Aldeguer, head of digestive medicine at the Josep Trueta Hospital and part of the study, dotted the i’s and crosses the t’s in a report on Cadena Ser.
No, a direct cause-effect relationship cannot be established, but the consumption of these products “may have favored it”. According to the doctor, Branyas’ profile was that of a 70-year-old, not a 117-year-old, thanks to “bifidobacteria” typical of younger people.
A project that is more than yogurt
The boom is not just about science; it is also about the heart. La Fageda is not just any multinational. It was born in 1982 as a radical social project of Cristóbal Colón, a psychologist who wanted to give decent work to people with intellectual disabilities or mental disorders.
Today, they sell more than 93 million yogurts a year, and the “Branyas effect” has only just begun. As Carreras says, at parties for the elderly, “grandparents are already demanding La Fageda yogurts for dessert”. It’s not just a yogurt, it’s Maria’s yogurt.
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