Whether a natural accompaniment to chocolate chip cookies or a time-honored healthy beverage consumed on its own, milk used to be something that the average American wouldn’t think to question. For decades, it’s been an ‘of course,’ rather than an ‘if’? in other words, milk has been a cultural norm.
Milk’s status as nourishment for the start of life and the nurturer of children gives it a poignantly moral status. But that’s changing. Milk’s reputation has soured with consumers, leading not only to its fragmentation but to a general decline. More than other foods, debates over its value escalate quickly into debates over how it is right for us to eat ? and not just in the sense of ‘healthy’ versus ‘not’ but even ‘acceptable’ versus ‘taboo.’ In recent years, our cultural relationship with milk has changed in three key ways:
1. We’ve become more critical of the establishments that tell us what’s good and bad to eat. With the ever-growing backlash against industrial food, our faith that those providing for, regulating and guiding our food experiences are doing their utmost to provide us with the best possible products and solutions (rather than self-serving compromises) has been brought into question. For example, the much-loved “Got Milk?” campaign, once regarded for all intents and purposes as a public health effort, has been recast as a pro-dairy, rather than pro-health, effort by a number of commentators.
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