Brigham Young University food science professor Lynn Odgen says he uses plastic soda bottles to maintain carbonation when shipping sparkling yogurt, such as these lemon and raspberry examples of his bubbly snack. View Slideshow 
For those who've never tried carbonated yogurt, here's what you can expect:
It's a little tart and a little sweet, and bubbles lightly with fruity flavor as it hits your tongue. People who like regular yogurt will probably find it tasty and also slightly weird, given that we usually associate carbonation with the fizzy bite of a cold soda.
"It's not painful like soda pop," said Lynn Ogden, a food science professor at Brigham Young University who developed the prototype product he calls "sparkling yogurt" using dry ice -- frozen carbon dioxide -- left over from making homemade root beer.
So far, he's only sold small batches of the bubbly snack to students, but he hopes it will catch the eye of a big food firm.
While they may not seem like obvious additions to the family grocery cart, carbonated dairy products are getting attention from food manufacturers looking for new twists on old standbys, and university researchers eager to earn revenue on culinary patents.
At Brigham Young, Lynn Astle, director of the school's technology transfer office, is talking with a large U.S. manufacturer and two European companies about licensing its yogurt technology. The university has patented the technology in several countries, including a U.S. patent on a process to make "a carbonated semi-solid or solid spoonable food formed by contacting said food with carbon dioxide."
Fans of fizzy milk products say they're appealing because they combine a flavorful bite with nutrients that soft drinks lack.
"We just have to get the idea across to the nation that carbonation is not really bad for you," Astle said. "Carbonation has sold an awful lot of sugar and pop. Why not use it to sell something that's healthy?"
Makers of a fizzy milk beverage called e-Moo have a similar idea in mind. The drink, developed by Massachusetts-based Mac Farms in a cooperative effort with Cornell University, is made from carbonated skim milk, fructose and added flavoring.
Currently, e-Moo, which comes in seven flavors, is available in about 100 schools, mostly in the New England region. George Clark, Mac Farms' president, said he plans to expand along the entire East Coast over the course of the year, taking advantage of stricter dietary guidelines schools are employing to combat childhood obesity. Clark also sees promise for sales in California, where this month Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill extending a ban on sales of soda in public schools.
Others are more focused on taste than nutrition. At MIT, two professors and a student recently began marketing a process they developed to carbonate ice cream. The inventors claim their system provides a cheaper, more energy-efficient way to make ice cream. They say it's also fun to eat.
"When you put the product on your tongue you get a woosh of gas that comes off the product and onto your mouth," said John Brisson, a mechanical engineering professor and co-developer of the carbonated ice cream. "With soda you don't get this woosh kind of thing."
Carbonation could extend to other foods and beverages as well. At Brigham Young, Ogden said the process used to make bubbly yogurt also works well with pudding, gelatin and similarly textured foods.
A company called Fizzy Fruit plans to introduce carbonated, cut fruit to sell at schools and other venues.
And at Cornell, Joseph Hotchkiss, a food science professor, is investigating to what extent adding carbon dioxide can improve the safety of raw milk supplies. Hotchkiss also developed a process for level carbon dioxide injection in dairy foods that is widely used by cottage cheese manufacturers.
But even die-hard dairy carbonation devotees don't recommend making milk products as fizzy as commercial soda. In the case of e-Moo, for example, Clark estimates that the beverage has only 20 percent of the carbonation of a regular soft drink. This has its benefits, he said: "You still get the effect of carbonation, but you don't walk around burping all day long."
