Spoiled: The Myth of Milk as Superfood

413 Pages·2023·6.869 MB·English

by  Anne Mendelson

SPOILED
ARTS AND TRADITIONS OF THE TABLE
ARTS AND TRADITIONS OF THE TABLE
PERSPECTIVES ON CULINARY HISTORY
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For a complete list of books in the series, please see the
Columbia University Press website.
S P O I L E D
The M Y T H of M I L K
as S U P E R F O O D
ANNE MENDELSON
Columbia University Press
New York
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2023 Anne Mendelson
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mendelson, Anne, author.
Title: Spoiled : the myth of milk as superfood / Anne Mendelson.
Description: New York : Columbia University Press, 2023. | Series: Arts and
traditions of the table | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022037361 | ISBN 9780231188180 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780231547703 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Milk as food—History. | Milk consumption—History. |
Milk—Pasteurization—History. | Advertising—Milk—History. |
Milk—Health aspects. | Milk trade—Environmental aspects.
Classification: LCC TX379 .M46 2023 | DDC 641.3/71—dc23/eng/20220922
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022037361
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent
and durable acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America
Cover design: Julia Kushnirsky
Cover image: P Maxwell Photography/Shutterstock.com
To the memory of my friend Nach Waxman:
bibliophile, champion of good food and
honest research, irreplaceable mensch.
He took a lively interest in this project
but did not live to see it completed.
B

CONTENTS
Preface ix
INTRODUCTION
1
1 MILK: SOME SCIENTIFIC INS AND OUTS
14
2 FROM THE CRADLE OF DAIRYING
TO THE ENGLISH MANOR
31
3 THE RISE OF DRINKING-MILK
53
4 SETTING THE STAGE FOR PASTEURIZATION
70
5 PASTEURIZATION: THE GAME-CHANGING YEARS
AND NATHAN STRAUS
104
VIII(cid:2)CONTENTS
6 SOUR MILK, BRIEFLY RETHOUGHT
140
7 MILK FOR THE MASSES: THE PRICE TO BE PAID
177
8 TECHNOLOGY IN OVERDRIVE I: THE ANIMALS
208
9 TECHNOLOGY IN OVERDRIVE II: THE MILK
241
10 REVIVING THE RAW MILK CAUSE
274
11 THE FUTURE
311
Acknowledgments 341
Notes 343
Select Bibliography 375
Index 385
PREFACE
T
his book never would have existed without the efforts of three
distinguished editors. Elisabeth Sifton welcomed my proposal
for a report on the state of the milk industry some forty years
ago and we worked on it together for several years before I realized that I
simply didn’t know enough to complete the massive survey I’d promised.
Much later, Judith Jones skillfully saw me through a completely different
project: a cookbook exploring the uses of fresh milk and dairy products,
with a brief sketch of its route from the prehistoric Near East to today’s
supermarket shelves. Most recently, Jennifer Crewe listened to some of
the obstinate ideas that had grown on me since the cookbook was pub-
lished and not only didn’t laugh them out of court but encouraged me to
turn them into a book.
Curiously, writing about milk from a cook’s perspective steered me to
a historical puzzle that I could not have noticed otherwise. Eating and
shopping in new immigrant communities of the Greater New York City
area—Balkan, Turkish, Indian, Central Asian—I grasped, first, that their
cuisines were linked by an intense devotion to yogurt under many names
and in many culinary roles and, second, that their home countries con-
tained some of the most ancient centers of dairying. To quote myself:
Slowly it dawned on me that in simple fermented yogurt I was tast-
ing something that might have been eaten or drunk by Old Testament