2019-09-01 Reader\'s Digest

Milk

Everyone’s

First Drink

By Kate Lowenstein

and Daniel Gritzer

I

f you are a mammal, and I assume

you are (Hello!), we are already well

acquainted, aren’t we? I was, after

all, your first food. I am the sweet se-

cretion that flows from the mammary

glands of a mammalian mom, the per-

fect nutrition for a baby human, cow,

dog—what have you. I’m what allows

an infant creature to exit its mother’s

body and still continue to get every-

thing it needs from her to grow into

a larger, intelligent (in your case) be-

ing, tremendously jam-packed as I am

with protein, fat, and delicious sugars.

The big twist with you humans, of

course, is that you figured out how

to continue your habit of drinking

me well beyond your infancy and

into adulthood. And rather than col-

lect human milk and bottle it up, you

chose a more efficient lactating crea-

ture to supply you: the cow.

This was an udder stroke of genius.

By domesticating a milk-supplying

animal—actually, over history, a

bunch of them, including sheep, goats,

buffalo, camels, and yaks—you found

a way to take advantage of otherwise

nutritionally useless grasslands and

pastures. Ruminants such as cows,

sheep, and goats are equipped with

multiple stomachs and the (some-

what impolite) habit of regurgitating

and re-chewing the contents of those

stomachs until they’ve squeezed

out every last nourishing molecule.

With this unrivaled digestive determi-

nation, these beasts manage to turn

scraggly weeds into copious amounts

rd.com | september 2019 33

Reader’s Digest

I Am the

FOOD

ON YOUR

PLATE

PhotographS by Matthew Cohen