Milk! A 10,000-Year Food Fracas by Mark Kurlansky

In liquid form, it was understood to cause illness and even death.

Milk was mostly used to make yogurt, cheese, butter, and other by-products. But some cows - not all, as activists like to claim - cry (or moo mournfully) when their young are taken away.įor many centuries, “artificial” feeding or any kind of milk drinking other than by nursing babies was fairly rare. Also, calves which are taken away and fed by humans become extremely fond of humans for the rest of their lives, perpetuating the cow’s status as the easiest animal to manage.

Some animal rights activists object to this, but the newborns, if left to nature, would drink nearly all of the milk during the mother’s most productive months.

The growing popularity of “artificial” feeding also led to ethical debates, as in order for milking animals to be both profitable and workable, their young must be taken away at birth. And because of its especially high production rate, the black and white Holstein breed of cow has become the standard all over the world, despite the fact that its milk is arguably of a lower quality than other, less productive breeds. So how did it happen that cow’s milk has ended up in our refrigerators? The answer is simply that cows are the most productive and easiest to work with of all mammals. ( Redheads were to be avoided.) The Romans decreed that wet-nurses should not be “temperamental or talkative.” The ancient Greeks strongly believed that a wet nurse should be Greek. There were even concerns about hair color: whether it was better to have a blond- or a brown-haired wet nurse. Since they were believed to impart their character through their milk, wet nurses had to demonstrate good morals, intelligence, and other desirable attributes. Many societies had legal codes with various provisions for the comportment of wet nurses. “Natural” feeding involved the use of a wet nurse, a coveted role among domestics usually far better paid than others, and therefore a difficult position to attain. Throughout recorded history, if a mother died, was incapable of breastfeeding, or chose not to, there were two alternatives: “natural” or “artificial” feeding.

The idea that this should be a woman’s decision is largely a modern concept. The enduring dispute over the value and healthfulness of breastfeeding mirrors the abortion debate in that it has historically been conducted largely by men, with some even condemning the moral character of women based on their choice to breastfeed or not. It has always been widely believed that the best milk for human babies is human milk - though somehow even this has been debated.

Milk! A 10,000-Year Food Fracas by Mark Kurlansky