Milk: A Local and Global History

by Deborah Valenze

The illuminating history of milk, from ancient myth to modern grocery store.

How did an animal product that spoils easily, carries disease, and causes digestive trouble for many of its consumers become a near-universal symbol of modern nutrition? In the first cultural history of milk, historian Deborah Valenze traces the rituals and beliefs that have governed milk production and consumption since its use in the earliest societies.

Covering the long span of human history, Milk reveals how developments in technology, public health, and nutritional science made this once-rare elixir a modern-day staple. The book looks at the religious meanings of milk, along with its association with pastoral life, which made it an object of mystery and suspicion during medieval times and the Renaissance. As early modern societies refined agricultural techniques, cow's milk became crucial to improving diets and economies, launching milk production and consumption into a more modern phase. Yet as business and science transformed the product in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, commercial milk became not only a common and widely available commodity but also a source of uncertainty when used in place of human breast milk for infant feeding. Valenze also examines the dairy culture of the developing world, looking at the example of India, currently the world's largest milk producer.

Ultimately, milk’s surprising history teaches us how to think about our relationship to food in the present, as well as in the past. It reveals that although milk is a product of nature, it has always been an artifact of culture.

Genres: Nonfiction, Food, History, Food History, Food Writing

368 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 28, 2011

Reviews

[Carolina · Rating 3 out of 5]

For an academic book, it was actually very accessible. I thought it was especially interesting how Valenze addresses not just the role of milk, but further addresses the prevalence of why cow's milk specifically (which wasn't something I'd really considered before). There was less about other forms of non-dairy milk than I'd expected bit overall covers a very broad scope.

Edit: reduced to three stars because of an incorrect name (factual incorrectness in academia enrages me)

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A few weeks ago, I was chatting with a friend and wondered, "What inspired people to start milking cows?" Milk isn't a universal part of the human diet (after breastfeeding)--its origins are centered in Northern Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia. And it isn't just milking (and making products from milk) that is the question, it's, "Why cows?"

In Milk: A Local and Global History, a cultural and social historian of early modern Britain, explores these and other questions. Milk, perhaps more than any other food than bread, is afforded significant social, cultural, and religious meaning. Milk plays a role in cultural/civilizational origin stories (India, Rome). It plays a role in how cultures and social classes define themselves and contrast themselves with others. It defines visions of the good life and visions of a rustic simplicity. And it is the subject of constant debates about public health and nutrition, and debates between the science of the laboratory and the wisdom of the barnyard. As Valenze notes, "Situated in culture, milk acted as a mirror of its host society, reflecting attitudes toward nature, the human body, and technology...In the historical record, milk repeatedly called attention to the larger forces of change." With amusing anecdotes and rich archival material, Valenze does an excellent job of tracing and analyzing this evolution.

[michael collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting

Less the science of milk. More the politics of milk. Certainly worth reading for armchair historians . Nothing cheesy about this book.

[Nina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like it when a book makes me see a common product in a new light. While focused mostly on cow milk, the history also covers goat, ass, mare, buffalo (India) and human milk. Cultures in the past ranged from disgust at the thought of drinking something that was an animal secretion in the same way urine is, to believing milk was cure-all for practically anything that ails you. I was horrified that lacking access to sufficient wet nurses and portable safe milk for orphans, babies would actually be held underneath an animal to such directly from the teat. Ugh! The history discusses the tremendous problems and expense of turning milk from a potential dangerous source of disease in young children into one that is guaranteed safe, something we totally take for granted. Women's organizations led the fight for healthy milk supplies long before any board of health did, conducting their own dairy and store inspections. They also led the fight to ensure even poor children could have access to the milk they needed for growth. When I was in first grade, we would be trooped over the cafeteria about 2:00 every day for "afternoon milk." I had always thought it was just a way to break up the day in a school that had inordinately long days for elementary school students, but now I think it was probably part of a milk nutrition campaign. Lots of interesting stuff here, even though the chapters about medieval days were dry.

[Balloon Bruce · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not what I was expecting. I thought this would be a history dairy foods and the dairy industry. It is more of an analysis of the psychology of drinking milk.

[Noemón · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice review of all the semiotics of milk!

[Cyndi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Milk was written by a historian, so you know the sources are solid and the conclusions carefully pondered. But the first 2/3 of it is more about "ooo look at this cool tidbit...oh look at that cool one!" than a thorough historical overview. It picks up as it gets to modern times (late 19th century). The chapter "Milk Gone Bad" is worth reading just for the history of artificial breast milk. The last chapter is about recent history (last 30 years or so) and it's balanced and accurate but a let down. I was hoping for history that would inform the present, but the present is almost an afterthought here.

[stillme · Rating 2 out of 5]

Milk is written in a very academic way, so I often found myself falling asleep while trying to read. It's possible you could just read the last two sections and get a good sense for why we drink so much milk. I feel that more coverage could have been given to the dairy lobbies and the huge "got milk" campaigns - these obviously affect how we view milk and why we think it's something we all need to drink.

[Megan · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book bored me to tears. I only made it a few chapters in. I thought I'd learn interesting things about milk, but the first several chapters were an exhaustive list of when and where milk has occurred in arts and literature. DNF.

[Christy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is read as a history book....which is why it took me so long to get through. The information was extremely interesting, just not 'get sucked in' kind of book.

[Francisco Valdes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very thorough historical and sociological perspective of milk and the dairy industry. Detailed and interesting. Well-written.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

ok, dry, interesting in parts

[Yanxy]

A bit dry, but if you like milk and have a curious mind, why not. Easy to skim.