Nature's Perfect Food: How Milk Became America's Drink

by E. Melanie Dupuis

Overview

The story of how Americans came to drink milk

For over a century, America's nutrition authorities have heralded milk as "nature's perfect food," as "indispensable" and "the most complete food." These milk "boosters" have ranged from consumer activists, to government nutritionists, to the American Dairy Council and its ubiquitous milk moustache ads. The image of milk as wholesome and body-building has a long history, but is it accurate?

Recently, within the newest social movements around food, milk has lost favor. Vegan anti-milk rhetoric portrays the dairy industry as cruel to animals and milk as bad for humans. Recently, books with titles like, "Milk: The Deadly Poison," and "Don't Drink Your Milk" have portrayed milk as toxic and unhealthy. Controversies over genetically-engineered cows and questions about antibiotic residue have also prompted consumers to question whether the milk they drink each day is truly good for them.

In Nature's Perfect Food Melanie Dupuis illuminates these questions by telling the story of how Americans came to drink milk. We learn how cow's milk, which was associated with bacteria and disease became a staple of the American diet. Along the way we encounter 19th century evangelists who were convinced that cow's milk was the perfect food with divine properties, brewers whose tainted cow feed poisoned the milk supply, and informal wetnursing networks that were destroyed with the onset of urbanization and industrialization. Informative and entertaining, Nature's Perfect Food will be the standard work on the history of milk.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814719374
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	02/01/2002
Pages:	310
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 6.00(d)

About the Author

E. Melanie DuPuis is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz and author of Nature's Perfect Food: How Milk Became America's Drink.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	vii
Part I	Consumption
1	Why Milk?	3
2	The Perfect Food Story	17
3	Why Not Mother? The Rise of Cow's Milk as Infant Food in Nineteenth-Century America	46
4	The Milk Question: Perfecting Food as Urban Reform	67
5	Perfect Food, Perfect Bodies	90
Part II	Production
6	Perfect Farming: The Industrial Vision of Dairying	125
7	The Less Perfect Story: Diversity and Farming Strategies	144
8	Crisis: The "Border-Line" Problem	165
9	Alternative Visions of Dairying: Productivism and Producerism in New York, Wisconsin, and California	183
10	The End of Perfection	210
	Afterword	241
	Notes	244
	Bibliography	271
	Index	297
	About the Author	311

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"A breakthrough piece of work in food studies as well as a very enjoyable read."

-Frederick H. Buttel,University of Wisconsin, Madison

"DuPuis's achievement is considerable—it is a rare scholarly volume that will also fascinate general readers. Fans of Mark Kurlansky's Cod will enjoy the diverse strands of history and science that define one of the commonplace staples in our daily lives—milk. Moreover, no one thinking about the present controversey over industrialized agriculture will want to go very far without DuPuis's analysis in hand."

-Sally Fairfax,University of California, Berkeley

"Intriguing, nuanced, and complex. The stories DuPuis tells about milk are at once captivating and analytically astute. Lots of historical surprises and ironies add spice to her extensive findings about more than a century of milk madness in America."

-Nancy Lee Peluso,University of California, Berkeley

"Du Puis' book is a rich and frothy drink, well worth consuming, just like its subject."

-New York History,

"This is an entertaining, informative, and tightly argued book, one well worth adding to any food library."

-Gastronomica

Editorial Reviews

"DuPuis's achievement is considerableit is a rare scholarly volume that will also fascinate general readers. Fans of Mark Kurlansky's Cod will enjoy the diverse strands of history and science that define one of the commonplace staples in our daily livesmilk. Moreover, no one thinking about the present controversey over industrialized agriculture will want to go very far without DuPuis's analysis in hand."

Sally Fairfax

"Intriguing, nuanced, and complex. The stories DuPuis tells about milk are at once captivating and analytically astute. Lots of historical surprises and ironies add spice to her extensive findings about more than a century of milk madness in America."

Nancy Lee Peluso

"Du Puis' book is a rich and frothy drink, well worth consuming, just like its subject."

New York History

"A concise look into the history of the growth of milk in America...it will answer all of your questions."

Agric Hum Values - Evan Perrault

"A breakthrough piece of work in food studies as well as a very enjoyable read."

Frederick H. Buttel

"This is an entertaining, informative, and tightly argued book, one well worth adding to any food library."

Gastronomica

"This is an entertaining, informative, and tightly argued book, one well worth adding to any food library."

-Gastronomica

"DuPuis's achievement is considerable—it is a rare scholarly volume that will also fascinate general readers. Fans of Mark Kurlansky's Cod will enjoy the diverse strands of history and science that define one of the commonplace staples in our daily lives—milk. Moreover, no one thinking about the present controversey over industrialized agriculture will want to go very far without DuPuis's analysis in hand."

-Sally Fairfax,University of California, Berkeley

"Du Puis' book is a rich and frothy drink, well worth consuming, just like its subject."

-New York History

"A breakthrough piece of work in food studies as well as a very enjoyable read."

-Frederick H. Buttel,University of Wisconsin, Madison

"Intriguing, nuanced, and complex. The stories DuPuis tells about milk are at once captivating and analytically astute. Lots of historical surprises and ironies add spice to her extensive findings about more than a century of milk madness in America."

-Nancy Lee Peluso,University of California, Berkeley


"A concise look into the history of the growth of milk in America...it will answer all of your questions."-Evan Perrault,Agric Hum Values

From the Publisher