The evolution of milk
ONCE upon a time, milk was enjoyed fresh, straight from the cow’s udder to your glass without any processing, and was mostly consumed on farms.
The growing population in cities far removed from farmlands opened up the opportunity for large-scale dairy operations to meet the demand for milk, and condensed milk and evaporated milk were born – distribution was easier as the concentrated milk is smaller in volume, and the reduced water content helps maintain its shelf life.
Still, fresh milk was widely consumed, and the lack of understanding of microbial and bacterial growth meant that milk-borne epidemics were rampant ... until the process of pasteurising – heating food and drinks and then cooling them to slow microbial growth – took hold in the food industry sometime in the late 1800s; refrigeration was made available around the same time.
Milkmen still made their daily rounds, bringing milk in open buckets that were susceptible to contamination – hence the birth of waxed paper-sealed glass milk bottles, which became the industry standard in the West until the 1950s.
Milk cartons started filling store shelves in the refrigerated sections, replacing glass bottles as the preferred choice of milk containers – they were cheaper, and prolonged the shelf life of milk by keeping out light; plastic bottles are launching a similar onslaught today.
Still, pasteurised milk could only keep for a week or two, unopened. So when UHT or Ultra High Temperature processing developed in the 1970s, allowing milk to be kept without refrigeration for six to nine months, one segment of the population embraced the novel new idea while others regarded it as suspect – it must be the work of preservatives, they said.
The current debate raging in the West (and locally among raw foodies) is whether raw, unprocessed milk should be allowed back into the market, citing reasons such as nutritional and enzymatic loss from heattreating milk.
The jury is still out on this, but perhaps raw milk will come full circle and take its place on supermarket shelves again.