I Am A Raw Milk Expert Now
The Weird Road from Ballerina Farm to Raw Milkmaids
Last week, I contributed to this article about all things milk, which is a sentence I never thought I’d type.
I learned a lot from this article. Did you know that milk consumption has gone up for the first time in the US since the 1970s? Did you know that milk has been explicitly linked to white supremacy? Did you know that “milk cleanses” have taken off? Did you know that raw milk heads care more about the food coloring in Cheezits than they do about “dangerous strains of salmonella, E. coli, campylobacter and listeria” ?????
Did you know that
predicted the milky beauty trend (which is only ramping up) back in 2023? Were we ever so young?!Anyway, the New York Times piece is a fascinating read about one of the most hilarious signifiers of our cursed age. Like, LOOK AT THIS SENTENCE IF YOU NEEDED PROOF WE LIVE IN HELL.
Peggy Xu used to post wide-ranging food content on TikTok, but it was only once she began drinking whole milk on camera that her following took off.
In addition to providing incontrovertible proof that the United States is no longer a serious project, Julia Moskin shares really interesting historical context for the moral and aesthetic power of milk. Which is where tradwives come in! And where my take comes in!
Definitely check out the article (gift link), and if you want my unpasteurized take on all things raw milk, raw milkmaids, Evie magazine’s academic concern for historical accuracy, and the bizarre history of pleasure dairies, read this. It might be the most important piece of cultural criticism I’ve ever written.
When I was in middle/high school my family kept milk goats, because we were all (except my mom) allergic to cow's milk. So I know for a fact, A FACT, that unpasteurized milk goes bad SO FUCKING FAST. Yes, it tastes great! Drink it right out of the goat, it's incredible! But if you want to hold on to it more than a day, you won't, unless you pasteurize it. Fight me, raw-milk-heads.
This whole thing is so weird. Surely it was just yesterday that I was a monster for feeding my child whole cow's milk instead of oat milk.
Reminds me how cyclical our nutrition trends really are… fats, carbs, dairy, superfoods