Milk

Paulus Potter’s 1647 painting of a bull and several cows and sheep is a masterpiece of Dutch naturalistic painting, and celebrates the Dutch dairy industry, which has existed for centuries.

Reading Spoiled: The Myth of Milk as Superfood by Anne Mendelson
has made me think about cows, dairies, and above all milk!

Milk: Ideal and Reality

Mendelson’s book is sometimes fascinating in its presentation of history and foodways, and sometimes overwhelming with medical, industrial, and technical details. The book contains a great amount of information about cows: how they produce milk; how they digest fodder; and how they have been raised on small-scale, large-scale, and gargantuan scale dairy farms both now and in the past. It also describes the development of “drinking milk” — how sweet milk was identified as a key source of nutrition for adults and children in the US; the various fads and fallacies that  convinced the public of its benefits, and what processing methods keep it safe from bacterial contamination. A discussion of the economics of farmers, dairies, and retail sales at both large and small scale also makes interesting reading.

Spoiled covers the development of medical theories about the health-giving features of milk as well as describing the dangers it poses to many who drink it. Over half of the US population past infancy lacks the enzyme necessary to digest milk. Because the dominant population — that is, Northern European White people —evolved the ability to digest milk many centuries ago, the lactose-intolerance of the majority has been ignored, and milk has essentially been forced on many lactose-intolerant people, especially school children. Mendelson deeply questions the received wisdom that milk is of universal value to human health throughout the human life span.

Spoiled  describes the long history of human domestication of cattle and other milk-giving animals, and of how people have consumed milk products through the ages. In fact, milk from cows, goats, sheep, yaks, water buffalo and even mares historically was used mainly in soured forms like yogurt, koumis, kefir, and many types of cheese. The fallacy of modern imposition of milk-drinking on peoples throughout the world is summarize thus: 

“Large doses of white-man’s-burden thinking were involved in telling people in every corner of the globe to drink milk by the pint or quart—thinking whose evil twin spawned ‘scientific’ race theories still happily embraced by American political extremists chugging milk as a badge of white supremacy.” (p. 30)

Reading all this social history has made me think about the many works of art where one sees representation of milk and dairy activity throughout history. As I looked up these interesting art works, I decided that instead of a detailed review, I would share several images that I enjoyed as I was reading. Once I started looking for images, I couldn’t stop so here are a lot of them. Note that the book has no illustrations whatsoever, and did not necessarily mention these pictures — it’s all my doing.

Poster by Théophile Alexandre Steinlen, 1894.

Pasteurization to sterilize milk was introduced at around this time,

and the history and science of this process are a major topic in the book.

The friendly cow all red and white,

I love with all my heart:

She gives me cream with all her might,

To eat with apple tart. 

—Robert Louis Stevenson

“Trees, Pasture, Cows” by Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966)

James Dean in "Rebel without a Cause" famously drank milk 
straight from the bottle that he took out of the refrigerator.

Selling and Promoting Milk

Borden’s condensed milk continues to be a popular ingredient in many home-made sweets. Throughout the 20th century, Borden milk was widely advertised by Elsie the Cow and her partner Elmer. In Spoiled, I learned that the Borden company had a very long history, beginning in the 19th century:

“An advertisement in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on April 30, 1858, announced that Borden’s Condensed Milk was available for delivery at 25 cents per quart, either in the form of ‘PURE MILK, from which when PERFECTLY FRESH, nearly all the water has been evaporated, and to which NOTHING is added’ or as ‘Borden’s Condensed Milk SUGARED, for Sea use and for long keeping on land.’” (Spoiled, p. 111)

 

Cows are a popular favorite image. Ben & Jerry's familiar cows appear in murals on the walls of
their scoop shops everywhere, and the company has a collection of favorites. I liked this one from Orlando, FL. (source)

Ben and Jerry’s cows. I doubt if the ice cream is made with
milk from happy, grazing cows.

Cows in an actual modern dairy do not graze in lovely fields. Giant dairy operations are discussed at length.

Milk was once delivered by milkmen.

An early 20th century milkman with his metal rack of bottles.
The milk would have been kept cool by large blocks of ice.
The era of horse-drawn milk trucks ended in the mid 1950s. 
Our milkman sometimes gave us chips of ice, and I remember its metallic taste.

A milk delivery truck from the mid-20th century. Today most milk is
purchased in supermarkets, not delivered to your door.

Today, virtually all milk is homogenized to break up the drops of cream.
Without this process, the cream separates to the top. These 1930s milk bottles

enabled the consumer to skim off cream to use separately or to shake the bottle before pouring.

“Partygoers’ by Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)

The Ancient Middle East

My favorite ancient figurine: a woman holding a butter churn on her head.
Chacolithic era from the sanctuary of Gilat in the Negev in Israel.
Dated 5500 to 6500 years ago.  (I have posted this several times.)

From the tomb of Methethi, Saqqara, Ancient Egypt c2371-2350 BCE
I enjoyed reading about this historic era, and how cows were domesticated.

A Final Word About Spoiled

One particularly interesting chapter of Spoiled describes the unfortunate pseudo-science of the raw milk proponents who have successfully argued against pasteurization during the last few decades. Mendelson particularly follows the influence of Sally Fallon Morell, “leader of a backlash against advocates of low-fat, low-cholesterol diets” in promoting the idea that raw foods, especially raw milk, are essential for health, based on a variety of scientifically unfounded theories:

“Her most recent book, cowritten with another anti-Pasteurian, casts doubt on the existence of viruses and posits that the great 2020 COVID-19 pandemic should have been recognized not as a virus-borne disease but as radiation poisoning from exposure to 5G frequencies.” (p. 365)

US government policy on raw milk is a response to serious discovery of pathogens in many sources of raw milk: “The FDA now treats unpasteurized milk as a substance so dangerous as never to be tolerated in the tiniest amount under any circumstances.” (p. 379) 

More and more evidence is coming to light about the value of pasteurizing milk and following established safety practices and regulations — even after 150 years since it began to be used, and nearly 80 years after it became standard in the US. For example, commenter Zenip Tufeci, writing last week in the New York Times, points out that new strains of avian flu have jumped from birds to cattle and affected several dairy herds this year. The emergent disease organism can be found in the milk of dangerously sick cows. “Unpasteurized milk, already a bad idea, would be additionally dangerous to consume right now.” (source)

In sum, the book Spoiled is mainly fascinating; full of wonderful bits of history, science, politics, and sociology; and well worth reading (even if you skip some of the most technical parts). I’m sharing my digressive discussion of the book with fellow bloggers at Sami’s Monday Murals and Altered Book Lover’s Tuesday Tea.

Review © 2024 mae sander