ABSTRACT
Today we tend to take milk’s status as a beverage for granted and we are surprised that milk only attained this distinction in the 1930s. Our culture associates milk with purity, health and goodness deep associations rooted, no doubt, in milk’s whiteness and the childhood bond of breast-feeding. These associations have mythic status in northern Europe and in North American society, where milk is an important element in national diets. In Britain, at the turn of the century, however, milk was regarded with suspicion and distaste. Its popularisation as a beverage in the 1930s was partly based on the rehabilitation of its mythic status in the eyes of the public, and in order to understand why milk’s image had become so tarnished it is useful to consider its early history.
