138 animal, vegetable, miraclepopulations that have little else in common other than cows: the tall, lean
Fulani of West Africa; the Khoi pastoralists of southern Africa; and the
fair- skinned Northern Europeans.
And then, to make a long story short, one of those populations pro-
ceeded to take over the world. If that’s a debatable contention, let’s just
say they’ve gotten their hands on most of the planet’s billboards and com-
mercials. And so, whether or not we were born with the La Leche for Life
gene, we’re all hailed with a steady song and dance about how we ought to
be drinking tall glasses of it every day. And we believe it, we want those
strong bones and teeth. Oh, how we try to behave like baby cows. Physi-
cians will tell you, the great majority of lactose- intolerant Americans don’t
even know it. They just keep drinking milk, and having stomachaches.
White though we are, my redheaded elder daughter and me, some
sturdy, swarthy gene has come down through the generations to remind
us that “white” is relative. We’re lactose intolerant. But still, like most ev-
eryone else, we include some dairy products in our diet. I can’t blame
dairy-industry propaganda, purely, for our behavior. The milk of mammals
is a miraculously whole food for the babes it was meant to nourish; it’s the
secret of success for the sheep, oxen, bison, kangaroos, seals, elephants,
whales, and other mammals that have populated every corner of the blue-
green world with their kind and their suckling young. For the rest of us it’s
a tempting source of protein, calcium, minerals, and wholesome fats.
It’s no surprise that cultures the world over have found, through cen-
turies of experimentation, countless ways to make it more digestible. Yo-
gurt, kefir, paneer, queso fresco, butter, mascarpone, montasio, parmesan,
haloumi, manchego, bondon, emmental, chenna, ricotta, and quark: the
forms of altered milk are without number. Taste is probably not the main
point. They all keep longer than fresh milk, and their production involves
reducing the lactose sugars.
The chemistry is pretty simple. Milk is about 85 percent water; the
rest is protein, minerals, butterfat, vitamins and trace elements, and sug-
ars (lactose)—which are dissolved in the water. When the whole caboodle
is made more acidic, the protein solids coagulate into a jellylike curd.
When gently heated, this gel releases the liquid whey (lactose and water).
Traditionally the milk is curdled by means of specific bacteria that eat—