Milk Trends in Western Europe

Milk Trends in Western Europe
The rise of milk as a milk in North-West Europe started in the nineteenth century, and is closely associated with industrial revolution. The diffusion of milk as a drink should be considered as part of a wider process of developing safe and healthy beverages for mass consumption, the spas or mineral waters, fruit juices and later the soft drinks.

Western Europe can be rightly classified as a region of lactophiles. There was a clear distinction had to be made between milk and non-milk using regions of the world, because of differences in the role of cattle in the food systems. The traditional non-milk using populations are to be found in humid tropical Africa, South East Asia but also in the Far East. In Western Europe the highest milk consumption is to be found in the Scandinavian countries and Ireland.

The Dutch consider themselves as typical drinkers. As a nation with traditions their level of milk consumption is not strikingly high compared with other countries. Italy is the only country of Western Europe where milk consumption is limited. In Italian food culture, milk is regarded mainly as a food and not as a drink. Its use strictly associated with breakfast and especially for infants. The appreciation of milk is very diffuse. Even in populations with a deficiency of the enzyme lactase to make digestion of the milk sugar lactose possible, people generally can drink modest quantities of milk.

In the Low Countries, with their relatively extensive livestock of cattle, pure milk in the unpreserved form was not a popular ingredient in the medieval kitchen of the gentry. Basically three kinds of milk were used: milk as such, skim milk (from which most of the fat has been removed) and buttermilk slight fermented low-fat content milk), which is a byproduct of butter making. Milk and buttermilk were used as ingredient for cereal porridges. In the rural areas of the Netherland, in the period 1900-1925, byproducts such as buttermilk and skim milk were still important ingredients in porridges.

Buttermilk was, however also appreciated as a drink in the eighteenth century in the countryside. Whey a liquid by product of cheesemaking was sometimes used as a drink. Small farmers and rural laborers kept some goats for milk supply. The goat was often called the cow of the poor. In the middle of the nineteenth century, before the industrial revolution in the Netherlands, milk was rarely taste by the working class households in the cities, a phenomenon which could be found in other cities of Western Europe.

In the nineteenth century the supply of fresh milk to the expanding town and large urban settlements posed many difficulties. Milk of good qualities was expensive and out of reach of the working classes.

In England, at that home the main industrialized nation of Europe not only fresh milk but likewise condensed milk was importance for urban consumer. As a relatively cheap milk product its consumption rapidly increased. It was, to a large extent used for feeding infants and young children. In Netherlands milk supplied to the cities was fresh milk and condensed milk played hardly any role. As in other European countries fresh milk was supplied directly from the dairy farm to the consumer in the cities, either by the farmer or by milk traders. The milk with her yoke bucket, selling milk at the doorstep was a common sight in many Dutch towns until of the nineteenth century.

This system was, however, inadequate: milk was often polluted or diluted with water. From the 1870s onward three factors have played crucial role in the diffusion of the concepts of milk as a diet, namely medical advice from hygienists, home economics trainings for girls, and group of progressive entrepreneurs within the dairy industry.
Milk Trends in Western Europe