Valenze, Deborah (Author)
Yale University Press
Physical Details: 368 pp.; ill.
Language: English
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.
...MoreReview Guillem-Llobat, Ximo (2014) Review of "Milk: A Local and Global History". Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (pp. 206-207).
Review Shostak, Stanley (2014) Review of "Milk: A Local and Global History". European Legacy (p. 135).
Review DuPuis, E. Melanie (2012) Review of "Milk: A Local and Global History". American Historical Review (pp. 1181-1182).
Similar Citations
Article
Speake, Stephen W.;
(2011)
Infectious Milk: Issues of Pathogenic Certainty within Ideational Regimes and Their Biopolitical Implications
(/isis/citation/CBB001221542/)
Article
Atkins, Peter J.;
(2011)
The Material Histories of Food Quality and Composition
(/isis/citation/CBB001210131/)
Book
Benjamin R. Cohen;
(2019)
Pure Adulteration: Cheating on Nature in the Age of Manufactured Food
(/isis/citation/CBB174903984/)
Article
Nelson, Bryn;
(2009)
The Lingering Heat over Pasteurized Milk
(/isis/citation/CBB001021066/)
Article
Friesen, T. Max;
Stewart, Andrew;
(2013)
To Freeze or to Dry: Seasonal Variability in Caribou Processing and Storage in the Barrenlands of Northern Canada
(/isis/citation/CBB001201437/)
Article
Donnelly, Catherine;
(2013)
75 Years of IFT: Food Microbiology in JFS--1936 to Present
(/isis/citation/CBB001320892/)
Article
Zachmann, Karin;
(2011)
Atoms for Peace and Radiation for Safety---How to Build Trust in Irradiated Foods in Cold War Europe and Beyond
(/isis/citation/CBB001033642/)
Chapter
Thoms, Ulrike;
(2014)
The Introduction of Frozen Foods in West Germany and Its Integration into the Daily Diet
(/isis/citation/CBB001500413/)
Book
Oddy, Derek J;
Drouard, Alain;
(2013)
The Food Industries of Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
(/isis/citation/CBB001422263/)
Article
Deborah Fitzgerald;
(2020)
World War II and the Quest for Time-Insensitive Foods
(/isis/citation/CBB718414676/)
Article
Williams, Amrys O.;
(2013)
FOOD: Transforming the American Table, 1950--2000: National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
(/isis/citation/CBB001320541/)
Article
Alessandra Maria Balestra;
(2018)
The industry of butter made with pasteurised cream as a defence against Tuberculosis transmission
(/isis/citation/CBB096991992/)
Book
Gratzer, Walter;
(2005)
Terrors of the Table: The Curious History of Nutrition
(/isis/citation/CBB000650554/)
Article
Stoff, Heiko;
(2008)
Hexa-Sabbat: Fremdstoffe und Vitalstoffe, Experten und der kritische Verbraucher in der BRD der 1950er und 1960er Jahre
(/isis/citation/CBB000930741/)
Article
Dunn, Elizabeth Cullen;
(2011)
The Pasteurized State: Milk, Health and the Government of Risk
(/isis/citation/CBB001210133/)
Multimedia Object
Claire Clark;
Williams, Elizabeth A.;
(2020)
Elizabeth A. Williams, “Appetite and Its Discontents: Science, Medicine, and the Urge to Eat, 1750-1950” (U Chicago Press, 2020)
(/isis/citation/CBB564940117/)
Article
Schleifer, David;
(2012)
The Perfect Solution: How Trans Fats Became the Healthy Replacement for Saturated Fats
(/isis/citation/CBB001230797/)
Book
David Gentilcore;
(2015)
Food and Health in Early Modern Europe: Diet, Medicine and Society, 1450-1800
(/isis/citation/CBB439265156/)
Article
Swislocki, Mark;
(2011)
Nutritional Governmentality: Food and the Politics of Health in Late Imperial and Republican China
(/isis/citation/CBB001212861/)
Book
Galen, ;
Grant, Mark;
(2000)
Galen on Food and Diet
(/isis/citation/CBB000102162/)
Be the first to comment!