Things that donors know: why milk?

A question that was sent a long time ago and waited, with the patience of a cow, for the Torah to answer "Why did cow's milk and not sheep's or goat's milk become such an important food?"

All female mammals produce milk and in principle you can get all food fathers from the milk of all of them. Indeed, throughout most of the history of dairy cultures, the milk of sheep, goats, athens and nakas was just as common as cow's milk. The milk produced was primarily intended for calves and the milk for our ancestors was, therefore, a seasonal food produced during the months of calving.

A remnant of this early seasonality can be found in the dairy foods link specifically for Shavuot at the beginning of summer when a little more milk can be extracted from the cow after the calf born in the spring has been weaned. Purely nutritionally, sheep's milk contains more protein (6% compared to 3.6%), calcium, magnesium and vitamins than cow's milk. What made cow's milk synonymous with milk in general and the white liquid such a common product is our company evolution and more precisely artificial selection.

The driving force of all development and change in the living world is selection: the success of carriers of preferred traits to pass their genes on to the next generation. Darwin opens his essay "The Origin of Species" precisely with a detailed discussion of strange varieties of pigeons cultivated by breeders by artificial selection. Artificial selection is much faster than natural selection because the breeder knows what traits he wants and the mutation process leaves no room for randomness: only a profitable cow will have offspring.

The cow has been domesticated for at least 6,000 years, but it was only a few hundred years ago that dairy farmers in Northern Europe began to cultivate breeds of cattle for milk only. Until then, the same herd of cows was supposed to provide both milk, meat and the plowing work, and similarly the sheep had to produce milk, meat and wool. In order to meet diverse tasks, the cow had to maintain reasonable body proportions and a proportionate investment of resources in milk production: not much more than the calf could suckle. This modest and seasonal natural milk yield forces the Maasai tribe in East Africa to skip the udder and they feed directly on the cow's blood.

When milk yield became the sole consideration of the dairy farmer, this artificial selection became a powerful force to the point of creating varieties that have a huge udder to which a cow is attached. The dairy breeds, primarily the Holstein: those black and white mottled cows were created in the Netherlands and exterminated old breeds from them almost in every corner of the globe. The Holstein excels in fantastic milk yield: a cow that weighs about 600 kg yields milk per year that is 12 times more than her body weight and from which solids weigh almost a ton. Until a few years ago, a slogan on the home page of the association of breeders of one of the varieties (the milking shorthorn) stated "In return on investment - Wall Street does not compete with a milking cow."

Indeed, the milk yield of a Holstein cow increased during the twentieth century 6 times (slightly more than the real yield of the Dow Jones index at the same time). The change means that fewer cows are required to supply more people with the milk for cornflakes. This dramatic increase is not only genetic but also due to a nutritional revolution. Ma'ale Gera cannot compete on Wall Street, that is, become a milk production plant based on cellulose (cellulose) nutrition. The agricultural logic that survived from the dawn of agriculture until the last century is formulated in the verse written in every mezuzah "And gather your grain and your inheritance and your harvest." And I gave grass in your breast to your cattle" (Deuteronomy XNUMX) The farm animals feed on the grass of the field - the parts of the plant that are not edible by humans and produce food from them in a slow process of breaking down cellulose by bacteria. Today, in order to quickly provide the cow with the abundance of energy to produce milk, it is fed food rich in starch, fat and protein, that is, in the human nutrients.

The genetics can be directed through careful selection of hybrids and the diet can be adjusted to maximize milk production, but you Laws of thermodynamics There is no way around it: when a cow of the same volume processes in a unit of time much more food into much more milk, much more heat is also generated. In the process of artificial selection, the Holstein cow (like her sisters from the Jersey breed who underwent a similar selection) became a small furnace that must be cooled by spraying water and blowing air to a normal body temperature in order to maintain its activity. No other dairy animal: sheep, goat or naka can compete with this monstrous marvel of artificial selection, technology and biochemistry. It is possible to imagine a different historical course in which the sheep breeders would actually concentrate on cultivating sheep breeds for milk, but the artificial selection process was cruel to the sheep in a different way and produced breeds that produce a high yield of wool.  

But why was milk even such an important food? Only humans consume milk in adulthood and only they produce it from other animals. Milk is a privileged food, in Western culture milk carries with it a symbolic and cultural meaning that goes far beyond its value as a source of calcium or calories. Milk symbolizes abundance, well-being, family and health, and there are those who take care to preserve and nurture these associations. For 7 years, Lynn McIntyre followed poor single mothers in Canada (where the price of milk is relatively high). From these interviews that touched on dealing with economic hardships from different areas of life (housing, education, health and food), the importance of milk stood out as a symbol and a source of anxiety.

A "good parent" in Western culture must, first of all, give the child a glass of milk in the morning. The situation where there is no money to buy milk for the child's breakfast is the greatest anxiety and the ultimate sense of failure of poor mothers even when other nutritional solutions are available and effective. The almost religious attitude towards milk in the West seems strange when it turns out that a significant part of the world's population does well without it. In fact, most of humanity has a hard time breaking down the milk sugar, lactose, and therefore the symbol of health: a glass of milk will cause them stomachaches.

As with most mammals lactase - the enzyme that breaks down lactose is not produced in the digestive system of older people. The ability to digest milk is, according to researchers, the result of the natural selection of European populations whose lack of vitamin D due to the lack of sunlight led to difficulties in calcium absorption and lactase activity in old age compensates for this lack. Although cattle are raised in the Fertile Crescent and are an important economic branch in Asia and Africa, the dairy cow: the one whose sole purpose is to supply milk is a distinctly European creation and, like it, daily consumption of milk. Andrea Wiley, an anthropologist who has studied the politics of milk, points out the illogicality of the medical definition of "lactose intolerance" which turns the natural intestinal function of almost every person of non-European origin into a "disease" that must be treated in order to allow them a "normal diet" i.e. One found in cloudy Europe.

The "food pyramid" is the common publication of the consensus regarding the optimal diet and it includes in Israel, like the USA, a separate category for dairy products and a recommendation to consume 2-3 dairy servings per day even though it is possible, in principle, to obtain the necessary calcium from a variety of other foods as well. According to Wiley and other critical nutritionists the pyramid reflects more the European cultural heritage of the medical elite than solid nutritional information. In 1920, long before the restrictions imposed by political correctness on the openness of the heart, a spokesman for the American Dairy Council explained that "the nations that achieved, became stronger and stronger. The energetic ones who reduced infant mortality and developed trade, art, literature and music. The most advanced in science and in any intellectual activity are those who consumed large amounts of milk and its products." Every statement in this arrogant statement can be debated, but there is no doubt that the nations that consumed large amounts of milk were the ones who first drew "food pyramids".

More on the subject on the science website:

Warming cows

The cow that defeated the black death

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