100 Fun Facts About Milk

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

It is also the top exporter of skimmed milk powder and the biggest producer and consumer of buffalo milk.

India overtook which country in 1998 to become the world's largest milk producer?

Operation Flood, launched in 1970, was the world's largest dairy development programme and turned a milk-deficient nation into the 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 intolerance is simply the lack of the enzyme lactase needed to split the two apart.

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

It is rarest among people of Northern European descent and most common, at around 90%, in people of East Asian descent.

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?

That is enough to kill pathogenic bacteria and keep the milk safe for up to three weeks if it stays refrigerated.

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

That is the temperature required to kill bacterial spores; the process was developed in the 1960s and reached shops in the 1970s.

Homogenisation stops milk from separating by doing what to its fat globules?

Left alone, the fat rises and collects as a layer of cream on top.

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

The black-and-white Friesian breed also makes up about 85% of the British dairy herd.

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

The small Channel Island breed's milk is also unusually high in butterfat.

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

At the other end of the scale, donkey and horse milk have the lowest fat content.

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

Mare's milk has more sugar than cow's or goat's, so the drink ends up mildly alcoholic.

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

The 'grains' are a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeasts, not cereal grains at all.

The word 'yogurt' comes from which language?

It is related to a verb meaning to knead or to thicken, and appears in Uyghur texts from before the year 1000.

Butter is roughly what percentage butterfat?

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

What is whey?

It is a by-product of cheesemaking and is the basis of ricotta and of Norway's brown cheese.

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

Strainers coated with milk-fat molecules were found in Kuyavia; Egyptian tomb murals show cheese about 2000 BC.

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

It does not melt, which is why it holds its shape in curries.

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

The milk solids and water are cooked off, leaving pure fat that keeps without refrigeration.

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

Customs records show a version called manjar being imported into Argentina from Chile as early as 1693.

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

His condensery in Connecticut opened the same year, and Civil War demand for the product made his fortune.

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

Hervey Thatcher's 'Common Sense Milk Jar' with its 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?

It could be folded, glued, filled and sealed at the dairy, and it eventually pushed out the glass bottle.

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

The hope was that a breakfast-table glance would jog someone's memory and lead to a tip to police.

Tetra Pak, the Swedish packaging giant, took its name from a carton of which shape?

Ruben Rausing built the company on Erik Wallenberg's plastic-coated paper design, sold under the slogan 'No more crying over spilt milk'.

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

Bags hold about a litre in South America, Iran, Israel and much of Europe, and half a litre in India.

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

Battery-powered floats were first introduced in 1889 and spread widely from 1931.

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

Once households could store milk for days, the daily round lost its reason to exist.

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

Younger children kept their third of a pint a day; the cut was part of wider spending reductions in the early 1970s.

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

Its first TV spot, 'Aaron Burr', was directed by Michael Bay; the milk-moustache ads adopted the slogan in 1995.

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

He went on to make Armageddon and the Transformers films; the ad is still ranked among the best of all time.

World Milk Day, established by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, is observed on which date?

The date 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?

He found the Jamaican cocoa-and-water drink unpalatable and added milk, though locals had probably been doing that for two centuries.

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

By 1900 the term meant wholesome drinks made with chocolate, strawberry or vanilla syrup, and electric blenders did the rest.

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

He was researching lactose intolerance and sustainable food at Lund University, 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?

It comes from cows that produce mostly the A2 variant, and is sold chiefly in Australia, New Zealand, China and the US.

What is colostrum?

It is packed with antibodies and growth factors, and 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"?

The first modern process for dried milk was invented by the Russian doctor Osip Krichevsky centuries later.

Which historical figure did Claudette Colbert also play, spawning the myth that Cleopatra bathed in milk?

It was Nero's second wife who was said to bathe in milk; the story simply migrated to the more famous queen.

The Greek name for the Milky Way, Galaxias, comes from the Greek word for what?

In legend, the band of light is Hera's spurting milk after she pushed away the infant Heracles.

The 2008 film Milk won Sean Penn which Academy Award?

Dustin Lance Black won Best Original Screenplay the same night; Gus Van Sant directed.

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

One Nordic country alone has around 250,000 in herds managed by Sámi villages.

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

The caterpillars store the cardiac glycosides and become poisonous to birds.

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

Its chemical formula is Mg(OH)2 and it doubles as a laxative.

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

Colours include blue, pink, yellow, brown and black as well as the familiar white.

Milk Duds, created in Chicago in 1928, got the 'dud' in their name because of what?

'Milk' referred to the milk in the original recipe; Hershey now makes them under licence.

The phrase 'milk run', meaning a routine trip with many stops, comes from what?

Such trains are documented in the American Upper Midwest as early as 1917, stopping constantly to pick up cans for the local dairy.

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

It began in 1946 as a district cooperative of milk producers and cut out the middlemen between farmers and drinkers.

Fonterra, responsible for around 30% of the world's dairy exports, is a cooperative from which country?

It is the country's largest company, with revenue above NZ$22 billion.

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

Its soft-serve formula had been developed two years earlier and test-sold at a friend's ice cream shop in Kankakee.

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

A Syrian concessionaire, Ernest Hamwi, curled a waffle into a holder when a neighbouring vendor ran out of paper cups.

In the Middle Ages milk was called the 'virtuous white liquor'. What else was it wrongly believed to be?

As 'white blood' it was treated like blood in religious dietary rules and humoral medicine.

Humans first began regularly drinking the milk of other species after which turning point?

Cattle, sheep and goats were domesticated in Southwest Asia, and cattle were tamed from wild aurochs more than once.

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

It came from about 260 million dairy cows, and more than six billion people consume 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?

Glues made from it with lime and soda were long used in woodworking, and its plastic form was once turned into buttons.

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

Herders in the Middle East and Horn of Africa have long survived for stretches on camel milk alone.

Besides rabies, Louis Pasteur developed a vaccine against which disease that devastated livestock?

He is also counted among the fathers of the germ theory of disease.

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

The same bacteria make propionic acid, which gives Swiss cheese its nutty flavour.

The word 'cheese' comes from caseus, a word in which language?

The same root gives us casein, the main milk protein.

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

France, Iceland, Finland, Denmark and Germany lead consumption, at around 25 kg per person 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.

Yogurt is made with Streptococcus thermophilus and which other bacterium, named for a Balkan country?

Bulgarian student Stamen Grigorov first described the rod-shaped microbe in 1905.

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

The name means 'little Daniel', and the company is now the giant Danone/Dannon.

The ice cream brand name Häagen-Dazs is what?

Reuben and Rose Mattus started the brand in the Bronx in 1960 and put a map of Denmark on early labels as a tribute to its wartime treatment of Jews.

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

It contains live cheese-fly larvae that can launch themselves 15 centimetres when disturbed.

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

Walter Gerber and Fritz Stettler wanted a longer shelf life; James L. Kraft filed the first US patent in 1916.

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

Individually wrapped Kraft Singles followed later and became a lunchbox staple.

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

The number became the cornerstone of the chain's marketing and is still in its logo.

Under US FDA rules, a product must contain more than what percentage of milk fat to be called ice cream?

Americans eat about 23 litres of ice cream per person a year, the most in the world.

Traditionally, buttermilk is what?

The name confuses people because it is actually low in fat; modern cultured buttermilk is made differently.

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?

Cows supplied 85%; goats, sheep and camels trailed far behind at about 2%, 1.4% and 0.2% respectively.

Which country's dairy farms does the FAO rank as the world's most productive per cow?

The same ICAR survey found average herd sizes ranging from 19 cows in Norway to 337 in New Zealand.

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

Most children outgrow it, but for about 0.4% the allergy persists into adulthood.

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

The argument leans on monotremes, the egg-laying mammals; the mammary gland is thought to derive from apocrine skin glands.

Which udder infection, tied to rBGH use, prompted Canada and Japan to ban milk from treated cows?

The US FDA, NIH and WHO have all reported the hormone residues themselves are safe at the amounts present.

Why are sows almost never milked, even though what they produce is fine for humans?

Sows also cannot store their milk the way cows do; a few farms sell exceedingly expensive pig cheese as a novelty.

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 young lap it from the mother's fur; the female also has two ovaries, of which only the left one works.

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

Nobody knows why the males do it; one theory is that it relieves some of the pressure of feeding the young from the female.

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

The sudden demand for colostrum drains more than the cow can mobilise from her bones, so older cows and Channel Island breeds are most at risk.

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

The habit spread from 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?

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?

It was the first win for a Northern Irish writer, and the book 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?

It was Frank Mars's first chocolate bar, and the company's later 'Dark' version was renamed Milky Way Midnight.

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

His powder was first called 'Diastoid' and only trademarked as malted milk in 1887; he also bankrolled the city's short-lived NFL team, the Legion.

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

The tagline was 'And all because the lady loves...'; the brand dates from 1915 and was outselling every rival by the mid-1930s.

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

The phrase appears in Exodus 3:17; the Israelites did not actually take possession until the conquest of Canaan after the Exodus.

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

It emerged last, carried in a pot by the physician-god Dhanvantari, after a deadly poison, a wish-granting cow and the goddess Lakshmi had already surfaced.

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

Only about 44% of infants worldwide were exclusively breastfed for that long between 2015 and 2020.

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

That is five per quadrant; elephants, kangaroos and manatees skip the two-set system and keep replacing teeth throughout life.

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

The rhyme 'red touches yellow, kills a fellow' is not fully reliable, since some of the venomous species lack the standard banding.

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

The first opened in Warsaw in 1896; in the 1960s they fed workers whose firms had no canteen, and today they are private but still partly subsidised.

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

The disease softens growing bones; the programme had a large effect, and US plant-based milks are now fortified too.

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

Its founders, the Page brothers of Dixon, Illinois, had built the world's largest condensed-milk factory in their home town before selling the US business to Borden in 1902.

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

Pasteurisation kills it, which is why human infections are now rare in developed countries.

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

Founder E. A. Stuart picked the brand name from a cigar display in a Seattle shop window; the company began in Kent, Washington, in 1899.