Cow's milk is among the most perishable
of all foods, due to its fluid form and
excellent nutritive composition. As it
comes from the cow, milk provides an ideal
medium for bacterial growth. To protect
milk's quality, this food is handled under
rigid sanitary conditions, resulting in low
bacterial count, good flavor and appearance,
high nutritive value, and freedom from
disease-producing organisms and foreign
constituents (National Dairy Council).
Acknowledgements:
Click the title of this entry, ¿Toma Leche?, and you will be redirected to the animated Got Milk website (in Spanish), where you will learn many interesting facts about milk, and pick up useful, dairy-specific, Spanish vocabulary. This cheerful site takes you on an inspiring virtual journey (think Disney's It's a Small Word) from milking a cow, through production, pasteurization, packaging, distribution, and ultimately consumption. Conspicuously absent from the site is the final step: evacuation. This propaganda piece, promoting the merits of cow's milk was an indispensable resource for the following essay.
For the sake of journalistic balance, you might also want to visit the www.notmilk.com website, a propaganda piece in its own right, hosted by the self-appointed not-milkman, Robert Cohen, whose mission statement includes, "breaking down the greatest myth in America: that milk does a body good." While I'm not convinced that "milk does a body good" is the greatest of American myths [enter late model capitalism], www.notmilk.com is an exhaustive hyperlinked world of testimonials and gold mines that include conspiracy theories dating back to Marie Antoinette. One of Cohen's biggest gripes is with the ubiquitous milk moustache campaign, and he blends famous real moustache adverts with charming "What's Next?" paranoid predictions, including painted-in white moustaches on both God and Adam in the Michelangelo piece above. My favorite image (suited to my Nixon obsession) is the following, It's Good For You, Trust Me.
Thank you to both sites for helping me find a journalistic balance in this confusing world, where one cannot decipher myth and reality.
The question remains: Milk. A virture, or a vice?
