99 Fun Facts About Milk

Which country is the world's largest producer of milk?

India has been the world's largest milk producer since 1998, turning out well over 200 million tonnes a year, roughly a fifth of global output, much of it from water buffalo.

Which country lost its place as the world's largest milk producer in 1998?

The USA was overtaken by India in 1998; India's Operation Flood dairy programme, launched in 1970, turned a milk-deficient nation into the world's top producer.

Milk looks white because light is scattered by fat globules and by tiny clusters of which protein?

Casein micelles are just large enough to deflect light and make up about 80% of the protein in cow's milk.

The main sugar in milk, lactose, is a disaccharide made of glucose and which other sugar?

Lactose is glucose bonded to galactose; the enzyme lactase splits the two apart, and people who stop making lactase after infancy become lactose intolerant.

Roughly what share of adults worldwide are affected by lactose malabsorption?

About 65% of adults worldwide have a reduced ability to digest lactose after infancy; the trait is rarest in people of Northern European descent and reaches around 90% in East Asians.

Pasteur's 1860s experiments showed heat could stop unwanted microbes in what?

He worked out the gentler method during an 1864 summer holiday in Arbois; heating wine to preserve it was already known in China by 1117.

Standard 'high temperature short time' pasteurisation heats milk to 72°C for how long?

HTST pasteurisation holds milk at 72°C for 15 seconds, enough to kill pathogens such as Mycobacterium bovis while leaving the taste largely unchanged.

UHT milk is heated above roughly what temperature for a couple of moments?

UHT treatment heats milk to about 140°C for a few seconds, hot enough to destroy bacterial spores; developed in the 1960s, it reached shops in the 1970s.

Homogenisation stops bottled milk separating into cream and skim by doing what to its fat globules?

Breaking them into tiny even droplets spreads the fat evenly through the milk; left alone, it rises and collects as a layer of cream on top.

Which breed accounts for about 90% of dairy cows in the United States?

Holsteins, the black-and-white cows bred from Dutch and North German stock, make up about 90% of the US dairy herd because no other breed matches their milk yield.

Milk from Jersey and Guernsey cows has a golden tinge because of what?

Carotene in the fat gives the milk its golden tinge: Jerseys and Guernseys pass the grass pigment into their unusually rich butterfat instead of converting it all to vitamin A.

Which animals' milk can contain more than 50% fat, the highest of any mammal?

Seals and whales make the richest milk of any mammal: hooded seal milk is about 60% fat, letting pups double their weight in a nursing period of only four days.

Which fermented drink from Central Asia is made from mare's milk?

Kumis is fermented mare's milk; mare's milk carries more sugar than cow's or goat's, so fermentation leaves the drink mildly alcoholic.

The fizzy fermented milk drink from the Caucasus is made by adding what to milk?

Kefir grains, a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeasts rather than cereal grains, ferment the milk and give kefir its slight fizz and tang.

The word 'yogurt' comes from which language?

Yogurt comes from Turkish yoğurt, related to a verb meaning to thicken or knead; the word is recorded in Mahmud al-Kashgari's 11th-century dictionary of Turkic languages.

Butter is roughly what percentage butterfat?

It is made by churning cream until the fat and protein separate from the buttermilk.

What is whey?

Whey is the liquid left after curdling: once milk sets into curds, the watery remainder is drained off and can be recooked into ricotta or boiled down into Norway's brown cheese.

The earliest archaeological evidence of cheesemaking, around 5500 BC, comes from which modern country?

Pottery strainers from Kuyavia in Poland, dated to around 5500 BC, carried milk-fat residues, the oldest direct evidence of cheesemaking; Egyptian tomb murals depict cheese from about 2000 BC.

Paneer, the fresh curd of South Asian cooking, is set with what rather than rennet?

Paneer is set with an acid such as lemon juice or vinegar rather than rennet, which is why it does not melt and holds its shape in curries.

Ghee, essential to Indian cooking and Hindu ritual, is a type of what?

Clarified butter is what ghee is: the milk solids and water are cooked off, leaving pure fat that keeps without refrigeration.

Dulce de leche, the caramel-coloured spread of Argentina and Latin America, is made by slowly heating milk with what?

Sugar and milk, cooked for hours, make dulce de leche; customs records show a version called manjar reaching Argentina from Chile as early as 1693.

Gail Borden received a patent in 1856 for condensing milk using what?

A vacuum pan let Borden boil milk at low temperature without scorching it; his 1856 patent led to a Connecticut condensery that year, and Civil War army orders made his fortune.

The first commercial glass milk jar patent in the United States was granted in 1878 to whom?

George Henry Lester received the first US patent for a glass milk container in 1878; Hervey Thatcher's 'Common Sense Milk Jar', sealed with a waxed paper disc, followed in 1884 and became the familiar model.

John Van Wormer of which city patented the gable-topped 'Pure-Pak' milk carton in 1915?

John Van Wormer, a Toledo, Ohio toy maker, patented his 'paper bottle' in 1915; licensed as Pure-Pak, the gable-top carton could be folded, filled and sealed at the dairy and eventually displaced the glass bottle.

In the 1980s, US milk cartons famously carried photos of what?

Photos of missing children appeared on cartons from 1984, beginning with two Des Moines paperboys, in the hope that a breakfast-table glance would jog someone's memory and bring a tip to police.

Which Swedish company introduced the aseptic carton that lets UHT milk keep unrefrigerated?

Tetra Pak unveiled its first aseptic carton in 1961: plastic-coated paperboard filled under sterile conditions, so the UHT milk inside keeps for months without refrigeration.

Milk in Canada is commonly sold in bags holding how much?

Canadian bags hold 1 1/3 litres, three to a four-litre pack; elsewhere bags hold about a litre in South America, Iran, Israel and parts of Europe, and half a litre in India.

By 1967, Britain's battery-powered milk floats had given the country what distinction?

Most electric vehicles in the world: by 1967 Britain's battery milk floats outnumbered the battery vehicles of the rest of the world combined, electric floats having replaced horse-drawn carts from the 1930s.

Why did doorstep milk delivery decline sharply in the second half of the 20th century?

Home fridges and supermarkets ended the round: once households could keep milk cold for days and buy it cheaply with the weekly shop, daily doorstep delivery lost its reason to exist.

'Milk snatcher' Thatcher ended free school milk for children of which ages?

As Education Secretary in 1971 Thatcher withdrew free milk from children aged seven to eleven as part of wider spending cuts; under-sevens kept their third of a pint a day.

The 'got milk?' campaign was created in 1993 for the milk processors of which US state?

The California Milk Processor Board launched 'got milk?' in 1993 to halt falling sales; agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners coined the line, which was later licensed to dairy boards nationwide.

Which director made the first 'got milk?' commercial, with the peanut-butter-mouthed history buff?

Michael Bay directed 'Aaron Burr' in 1993, years before Armageddon and the Transformers films; in it a history buff with a mouthful of peanut butter cannot answer 'Who shot Alexander Hamilton?' on a radio quiz.

World Milk Day, established by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization in 2001, falls on which date each year?

1 June was chosen in 2001 because many countries already held a milk day around then.

Which 17th-century botanist is credited by London's Natural History Museum with inventing chocolate milk?

Hans Sloane, visiting Jamaica in 1687-89, found the local cocoa-and-water drink nauseating and mixed it with milk; London apothecaries later sold the recipe, though Jamaicans had probably long done the same.

When the word 'milkshake' first appeared in print in 1885, what did it describe?

An eggnog-style whiskey tonic: the 1885 print debut called milkshakes a 'sturdy, healthful eggnog type of drink' made with eggs and whiskey; by 1900 the word meant wholesome syrup-flavoured drinks.

Oat milk was invented in the 1990s by food scientist Rickard Öste at a university in which country?

Rickard Öste developed oat milk at Lund University in Sweden in the early 1990s while researching lactose intolerance and sustainable food, and went on to found Oatly.

Which plant-based drink spread across Europe during the Middle Ages, centuries before the modern boom?

The phrase 'milk-like plant juices' dates to the 13th century; almond milk was useful on fasting days when animal products were banned.

A2 milk differs from ordinary cow's milk in the form of which protein it contains?

Beta-casein comes in A1 and A2 variants; A2 milk comes from cows that produce only the A2 form, and is sold chiefly in Australia, New Zealand, China and the US.

What is colostrum?

The first milk after giving birth is colostrum, packed with antibodies and growth factors; newborn calves that miss it are at serious risk.

According to Marco Polo, which people carried sun-dried skimmed milk as "a kind of paste"?

Mongol soldiers of Kublai Khan's army, Marco Polo wrote, carried sun-dried skimmed milk as a paste and stirred it into water on the march; the first modern dried-milk process came from Russian doctor Osip Krichevsky in 1802.

Claudette Colbert's famous 1932 on-screen milk bath portrayed which Roman woman?

Poppaea Sabina, Nero's wife, was said by Pliny to bathe in asses' milk; Colbert recreated the bath in The Sign of the Cross (1932), two years before she played Cleopatra, of whom the story is more often told.

In Greek myth, whose spilled breast milk formed the Milky Way?

Hera, tricked into nursing the infant Heracles, pushed him away and her spurting milk streaked across the sky; the Greek name Galaxias comes from gala, meaning milk.

The 2008 film Milk won Sean Penn which Academy Award?

Sean Penn took Best Actor for playing Harvey Milk, his second win after Mystic River; Dustin Lance Black won Best Original Screenplay the same night and Gus Van Sant directed.

Which animals are the only large-scale semi-domesticated deer, kept and milked by the Sámi among others?

Reindeer are the only deer herded on a large scale; Sweden alone has around 250,000 in herds managed by Sámi villages, and reindeer milk, though scant, is exceptionally rich in fat.

Milkweed gets its name from a milky latex that contains toxins essential to which insect's larvae?

Monarch butterfly caterpillars feed only on milkweed, storing its cardiac glycosides so that both larvae and adults are poisonous to birds.

Milk of magnesia, the classic antacid, is a suspension of which compound?

Magnesium hydroxide, Mg(OH)2, neutralises stomach acid and also works as a laxative; the milky white suspension gives the product its name.

Milk glass, the opaque glass beloved of collectors, was first made where in the 16th century?

Venice's glassmakers first made milk glass in the 16th century as an imitation of porcelain; it comes in blue, pink, yellow, brown and black as well as the familiar white.

Milk Duds, the Chicago caramel candy, got the 'dud' in their name because of what?

Failed attempts to make them perfectly round led the makers to call them 'duds'; the 'milk' was the generous amount of milk in the recipe. The brand passed to Hershey in 1996.

The phrase 'milk run', meaning a routine trip with many stops, originally described what?

Trains collecting farmers' churns, stopping at every halt for cans bound for the creamery, were 'milk trains'; their slow many-stop timetable gave the phrase its meaning, later borrowed by wartime aircrews for easy missions.

Amul, India's giant dairy brand, is based in Anand in which state?

Anand in Gujarat is home to Amul, which began in 1946 as the Kaira district milk cooperative and cut out the middlemen between farmers and drinkers; the model became India's Operation Flood.

Fonterra, one of the world's largest dairy exporters, is a cooperative from which country?

New Zealand's Fonterra was formed in 2001 by merging the country's two biggest dairy cooperatives with the New Zealand Dairy Board; owned by thousands of farmer-shareholders, it handles most of the country's milk.

Dairy Queen's first store opened in 1940 in which Illinois town?

The first Dairy Queen opened in Joliet in 1940, run by Sherb Noble, the Kankakee shop owner who had test-sold the McCulloughs' soft-serve formula two years earlier.

The ice cream cone is often said to have taken off at the 1904 World's Fair in which city?

At the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, Syrian concessionaire Ernest Hamwi is said to have curled a waffle-like zalabia into a holder when a neighbouring ice cream vendor ran out of dishes.

In medieval humoral medicine, milk was wrongly believed to be what?

Blood diverted from the womb: humoral medicine held that after birth the blood that had nourished the fetus was rerouted to the breasts and whitened into milk, so milk was treated as a form of blood.

Humans first began regularly drinking the milk of cattle, sheep and goats after which turning point?

Neolithic domestication of livestock came first: cattle, sheep and goats were tamed in Southwest Asia, and cattle from wild aurochs more than once.

In 2011, the world's dairy farms produced roughly how much milk?

Roughly 730 million tonnes of milk came from about 260 million dairy cows in 2011, by FAO estimates; more than six billion people consume milk or milk products.

Which of these is NOT an animal whose milk humans traditionally drink?

Water buffalo, horses, sheep and goats are all milked; pig milk is not commercially collected.

The main protein in cow's milk, making up about 80% of it, takes its name from the Latin word for what?

Casein takes its name from caseus, the Latin for cheese, since curdled casein is what cheese is made of; casein glues were long used in woodworking and casein plastic once made buttons.

Camel dairy farming has grown in Australia and the US as an alternative suited to what?

Arid regions suit camels, which give milk on sparse dry-country forage where cattle struggle; herders in the Middle East and Horn of Africa have long survived for stretches on camel milk alone.

What is the approximate pH of fresh cow's milk?

Fresh cow's milk has a pH of about 6.7, slightly acidic, from dissolved carbon dioxide, phosphates and casein; as bacteria turn lactose into lactic acid the pH falls and the milk curdles.

The holes in Emmental cheese are bubbles of which gas, produced by Propionibacterium during ageing?

Carbon dioxide bubbles form the eyes: Propionibacterium ferments lactic acid into propionic acid, which gives Swiss cheese its nutty flavour, plus carbon dioxide that collects in pockets as the cheese ripens.

Which country produced about 28% of the world's cow-milk cheese in 2022, more than any other?

The United States made about 28% of the world's cow-milk cheese in 2022, roughly 6 million tonnes; per head, though, the French, Icelanders, Finns, Danes and Germans eat the most, around 25 kg a year.

Jesse Williams, who began assembly-line cheese factory production in 1851, farmed in which state?

His operation in Rome, New York, pooled milk from neighbouring farms, an idea Wisconsin later perfected.

By legal definition, yogurt is cultured with Streptococcus thermophilus and which other bacterium?

Lactobacillus bulgaricus, formally L. delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, was first described in 1905 by Bulgarian student Stamen Grigorov; with Streptococcus thermophilus it is the culture Codex and US rules require for anything sold as yogurt.

Isaac Carasso named his 1919 Barcelona yogurt company Danone after whom?

Danone is Catalan for 'little Daniel', named for his son Daniel, who later took the business to France in 1929 and to the United States in 1942, where it became Dannon.

The ice cream brand name Häagen-Dazs is what?

An invented pseudo-Scandinavian phrase: Reuben Mattus made up the meaningless name for an air of Danish quality when he launched the brand in the Bronx in 1960, even printing a map of Denmark on early cartons.

Casu martzu, a sheep's-milk cheese outlawed under EU hygiene rules, comes from which island?

Sardinia's casu martzu is pecorino left for cheese flies to lay eggs in; the live larvae, which can launch themselves 15 centimetres when disturbed, digest the fat into a soft, pungent paste.

Processed cheese was first made in 1911 in which country, by adding sodium citrate to Emmentaler?

In Switzerland, cheesemakers Walter Gerber and Fritz Stettler of Thun melted Emmentaler with sodium citrate in 1911 to extend its shelf life; James L. Kraft filed the first US processed-cheese patent in 1916.

In what year did Kraft introduce the first commercially available sliced processed cheese?

Kraft launched pre-sliced processed cheese in 1950; individually wrapped Kraft Singles followed in 1965 and became a lunchbox staple.

Baskin-Robbins' famous 31 flavours were meant to represent what?

One for every day of the month was the idea when Burt Baskin and Irv Robbins unified their shops under one name in 1953; the 31 became the cornerstone of the chain's marketing and its logo.

Under US FDA rules, ice cream must contain at least what percentage of milk fat?

Ice cream must contain at least 10% milk fat under the FDA standard of identity; Americans eat about 23 litres of ice cream per person a year, among the most in the world.

Traditionally, buttermilk is what?

The liquid left after churning butter is traditional buttermilk, which is why, despite the name, it is low in fat; modern cultured buttermilk is skimmed milk soured with bacteria instead.

According to one story, the ice cream sundae was invented to get around laws forbidding what on Sundays?

The blue laws targeted soda fountains, so ice cream with syrup and no fizz kept the customers coming.

Which animal produced about 11% of the world's milk in 2011, second only to cows?

Water buffalo gave about 11% of the world's milk in 2011, mostly in India and Pakistan; cows supplied 85%, and goats, sheep and camels trailed far behind at about 2%, 1.4% and 0.2%.

Which country's dairy cows has the FAO ranked as the world's highest-yielding per animal?

Israel's dairy cows topped an FAO-cited ICAR survey with average yields well over 10,000 kg a year, thanks to intensive feeding and breeding; the same survey found herd sizes from 19 cows in Norway to 337 in New Zealand.

Cow's milk allergy affects roughly what share of babies and young children?

Cow's milk allergy affects about 2% to 3% of infants and young children; most outgrow it by school age, and it is rare in adults.

What has been suggested as the original evolutionary function of lactation?

Keeping eggs moist: one hypothesis holds that early mammal ancestors secreted fluid from skin glands to stop parchment-shelled eggs drying out, and that the mammary gland evolved from such apocrine glands, as monotremes suggest.

Which cow disease did Health Canada cite in rejecting the milk hormone rBST in 1999?

Mastitis, an udder inflammation, was among the animal-health harms (with lameness and infertility) that Health Canada cited in 1999 when it refused to license rBST, though the US FDA, NIH and WHO have found the hormone residues in milk safe.

Which enzyme from calves' stomachs is the active ingredient of traditional rennet?

Chymosin, also called rennin, is extracted from the fourth stomach of unweaned calves; it clips kappa-casein on milk micelles so the curd sets, and since 1990 much commercial chymosin has come from genetically engineered microbes.

Which birds feed their chicks a cheese-like 'crop milk' secreted in the parent's throat?

Flamingos and male emperor penguins make it too; in pigeons both parents produce it and may stop eating so the squabs get it free of seeds.

Which mammal has no teats and instead releases milk through pores in its skin?

The platypus, a monotreme, has no nipples: milk oozes from mammary-gland pores onto patches of fur, where the young lap it up. Echidnas, the other monotremes, feed their young the same way.

The Dayak fruit bat of Borneo is one of the few animals known for what?

Males producing milk: male Dayak fruit bats have been found lactating in the wild, a near-unique case among mammals; nobody knows why, though one theory is that it eases the female's burden of feeding the young.

'Milk fever', which strikes dairy cows just after calving, is a shortage of which mineral?

Calcium is drained by the sudden demand of colostrum faster than the cow can mobilise it from her bones, causing hypocalcaemia; older cows and Channel Island breeds are most at risk.

Which small British garden bird learned in the 1920s to peck through foil milk-bottle tops to reach the cream?

Blue tit taught blue tit: the habit spread bird to bird as a textbook case of cultural learning, then faded along with doorstep delivery and full-fat milk.

The Milkmaid, a c.1658 painting of a kitchen maid pouring milk, is by which Dutch artist?

Johannes Vermeer painted The Milkmaid in Delft around 1657-58; it hangs in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, which calls it 'unquestionably one of the museum's finest attractions'.

Anna Burns's novel Milkman won which literary award in 2018?

Milkman took the Booker Prize in 2018, the first win for a Northern Irish writer; it went on to take the International Dublin Literary Award in 2020.

The Milky Way chocolate bar, created by Frank Mars in 1923, was named after what?

A popular malted drink, the malted milkshake, gave the bar its name and flavour: Frank Mars sold it from 1923 as 'chocolate malted milk in a candy bar', his first big success.

Malted milk's original patent holder, William Horlick, settled in which Wisconsin city?

William Horlick built his factory in Racine, Wisconsin, where his powder was first called 'Diastoid' and trademarked as malted milk in 1887; he also backed the city's short-lived NFL team, the Racine Legion.

Which Cadbury box of chocolates was delivered by a James Bond-style hero in TV ads from 1968?

Milk Tray's 'Man in Black' ads ran from 1968 with the tagline 'And all because the lady loves Milk Tray'; the brand dates from 1915, when the chocolates were sold loose from trays, hence the name.

In the Book of Exodus, what is described as 'flowing with milk and honey'?

The Promised Land of Canaan is 'a land flowing with milk and honey' in Exodus 3:8 and 3:17, God's pledge to Moses at the burning bush; the Israelites took possession only after forty years in the wilderness.

In Hindu myth, gods and demons churned the Ocean of Milk to obtain which elixir of immortality?

Amrita emerged last, carried in a pot by the physician-god Dhanvantari, after the poison halahala, the wish-granting cow Kamadhenu and the goddess Lakshmi had already surfaced from the churning.

The WHO recommends feeding babies nothing but breast milk for how long?

Six months of exclusive breastfeeding, then breast milk alongside solids to two years or beyond, is the WHO advice; only about 44% of infants worldwide were exclusively breastfed that long between 2015 and 2020.

How many milk teeth does a child's full first set contain?

20: five per quadrant (two incisors, a canine and two molars), which fall out from about age six as the 32 permanent teeth come through.

The harmless North American milksnake's red, black and yellow bands mimic which venomous reptile?

Coral snakes wear the same red, black and yellow; the rhyme 'red touches yellow, kills a fellow' separates them from milksnakes in the US but fails for some coral snake species elsewhere.

In Poland, a 'bar mleczny' or milk bar is what kind of establishment?

A cheap, state-subsidised canteen: the first milk bar opened in Warsaw in 1896, and under communism they fed workers whose firms had no canteen; many survive as private businesses serving subsidised dishes.

Cow's milk began to be fortified with vitamin D in the 1930s to fight which childhood disease?

Rickets, which softens and bows growing bones, was common in smoggy industrial cities; fortifying milk with vitamin D from the 1930s all but eliminated it in the US.

Which rival did the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company merge with in 1905?

Nestlé and Anglo-Swiss merged in 1905 as the Nestlé and Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company; Anglo-Swiss's founders, the Page brothers of Dixon, Illinois, had sold their US business to rival Borden in 1902.

Mycobacterium bovis, once commonly caught by drinking raw milk, causes which disease?

Bovine tuberculosis, passed to humans in raw milk, was a major killer of children before pasteurisation; heat treatment kills Mycobacterium bovis, which is why human cases are rare in countries that pasteurise.

Carnation evaporated milk's famous slogan claimed it came from what?

'From Contented Cows' became Carnation's slogan in 1907; founder E. A. Stuart had picked the brand name from a cigar display in a Seattle shop window after starting the company in Kent, Washington, in 1899.