The Evolution of Milk
I love milk. Milk quickly became a daily part of my life; every morning I would wake up, go to the fridge, grab a gallon of milk, place it on the counter, and watch the milk curdle. Man that takes forever. Waiting for milk to curdle is like when you place two snails in a box hoping they will fight: nothing interesting happens until you turn your back, and then the action is all over. Well at least you can encourage both snails and milk with a little salt. Anyways, I am not entirely sure why I love milk so much, perhaps I just like the fact that we drink the white liquid from the teat of an oversized methane generator. Well I decided that I liked milk enough to dedicate some time to researching its history, which is more than I have done for any other love of my life such as differential equations and toast (milk goes great with toast by the way). The following is a report of my findings; I highly encourage you to read the foot notes as you go.
Milk was first discovered millenniums ago by my mother. Back then she was a cave man, or cave woman if you want to be politically correct (and yes, she is that old). Just as cave men are the ancestors of modern humans, saber-toothed cows are the ancestors of modern cows. Saber-toothed cows were vicious animals, and are believed to be closely related to the saber-toothed jackrabbits (which are believed to have evolved into the Trix cereal rabbit). As you can imagine, cave men were weary of approaching a saber-toothed cow, and tended to avoid them in favor of keeping their limbs. In fact, cave men would go out in large numbers and mercilessly slaughter saber-toothed cows in the same way they would hunt lions, coyotes, and grapefruit of unusually large size.
The cave men thought life was good. The food was plentiful, the saber-toothed cow was almost extinct, dental care was at an all time high, and the use of thumbs was discovered (while function of the brain has yet to be discovered to this date for most). The extinction of saber-toothed cows would have been disastrous for me and my milk, but thankfully in another part of the world Hinduism was founded. This was an odd twist of fate, to go from slaughtering saber-toothed cows to worshipping them, one that would eventually result in the enslavement of one species and the rise of McDonald’s. Once cave men learned from the Hindus that saber-toothed cows could be friendly, they started to raise and care for saber-toothed cows themselves. It was then that my cave woman of a mother, in a moment of drunkenness[1], discovered how tasty milk was.
Now we’ll fast forward a few years to the industrial revolution. After many, many years of good ole’ fashioned wholesome milk, society was suffering from more tension than my girlfriend at the climax of a boring episode of some forgetful soap opera[2]. So in order to combat the tensions, new types of milk were developed. It was promised to be revolutionary, something that would change the way people think. It was skim milk! It was a letdown. To try and cover failure of skim milk, companies raced to put 1% and 2% milk on the shelves, but nothing can replace the perfection of whole milk. Or so I thought, but I will get to that later.
It was around this time that goat milk was discovered to be edible, or should I say drinkable. Once again the discoverer was my mother, in (another) moment of drunkenness, who took the first taste of goat’s milk[3]. Once she sobered up a little she tried to market goat milk, hoping for the same success with the original milk but instead finding nobody could stand the taste. After many failures she discovered a niche market a suburb of England. The market quickly spread to all of England as the English people discovered that goat milk tastes much better than English cuisine.
Sometime in the mid 1900s powdered milk was invented to help crack addicts get over their addiction. Nobody is really sure who thought of the idea (it was probably a crack head), but doctors everywhere called powdered milk a genius idea[4]. Things were a little hectic for a while with the police, and a lot of people got arrested on “possession of drugs” but nobody cared because powdered milk is an abomination of milk everywhere. In fact, this whole paragraph should have been a footnote because it is so insignificant.
One of the last important developments of milk was the addition of flavor to milk, namely strawberry and chocolate. Well, we thought flavored milk was a new development, but it turns out that the Swiss have been drinking flavored milk for years and years. Their aversion of war over the last 200 years wasn’t from cowardice, but rather they are just so beefy (because of the milk) that nobody wants to mess with them. So flavored milk is finally introduced to the rest of the world in the modern age, and of course kids become very happy as a result. The general reaction has been “You can drink chocolate? That is the best thing since sliced bread[5]!” Maybe flavored milk is the best thing since sliced bread, but I prefer some of the more radical flavors such as pineapple flavored milk or milk flavored milk.
So as a recap, we have seen millions of years of milk evolution crammed into the span of a pathetically short “research” paper. Aside from the abomination to milk following the industrial revolution (from less fatty milks to powdered milk), milk has had a very prestigious history and has earned its rightful place in the history of mankind as the greatest beverage ever created.
[1] She was actually dared to, but only did it because she was drunk. The amount of drunkenness seems to exponentially affect your willingness to take up dares.
[2] Well I thought it was boring and forgetful, just don’t tell her because I might not wake up the next day, or ever again.
[3] Her liver gave up on her years ago, so maybe that is why she was able to handle the goat milk. You should see her today: she can down more alcohol in a single night than most of Ireland can in a year.
[4] It wasn’t really a genius idea. Snorting things into your nose? This sounds about as smart as your average Hollywood celebrity.
[5] Before sliced bread, people used to say “This is the best thing since cow milk.” or if you are English “We’re going to need more goat milk, chaps!”