"Can any other food product be as staggeringly difficult and expensive as milk to get from source (in this case, a cow) to destination (milk glass on table) in something loosely approximating its original condition? Cow and goat milk was consumed only in fermented form for centuries (e.g., cheese, yogurt) until modern times. The rise of fresh milk drinking is unnecessary, expensive, bad for the environment, and nonsensical, and has grown into a huge industry only because in the early 20th century advertising campaigns convinced doctors and the rest of us that milk was an essential food. Mendelson's book is a history of the food she describes as "drinking-milk," referring to dairy animals' milk that is consumed in fluid form rather than as some kind of fermented sour milk or cheese. Contrary to popular belief, it never figured prominently in human diets until very recently. Mendelson argues that milk's rise to the status of nutritional mainstay - the first scientifically anointed superfood of the modern industrialized world - was one of the great flukes of food history. The founders of Western medicine had no way of understanding the genetic anomaly that allowed them, unlike most of the world's peoples, to digest lactose from babyhood to old age. In other words, today's mega-industry stemmed from a lack of scientific perspective. Mendelson further argues that in the case of drinking-milk's merits or demerits, early modern medical authorities' unquestioning faith in their own advanced knowledge lured them into misguided teachings destined to form the flawed basis of a huge - and soon troubled - industry that is now on the thin edge of unsustainability. From the Enlightenment era on, the seeds of many future dairy-industry crises lurked in an unavoidable bit of historical mistiming: Medical authorities arrived at a supposedly up-to-the-minute belief that "sweet" (unfermented, and thus full-lactose) drinking-milk was purer and more healthful than sour milk, well before crucial scientific advances that might have triggered some doubts. The purpose of this book is not to portray drinking-milk from dairy animals as a dangerous poison but to explain how milk is produced, and to debunk the idea that milk in unfermented fluid form is a food of unique virtues whose use goes back to remote prehistory. Along the way, she provides an interesting look at the history of the raw-versus-pasteurized milk debate, and how it has developed into not only a public health debate but also a 'personal choice' question adopted by those on opposite sides of the political spectrum"-- Provided by publisher.
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