Lactose intolerant
March 26, 2020
I’ve come to the conclusion that milk has white privilege. Touted as the calcium crusader, our osteo-overlord, the milky antidote to our bony needs. I’ve always detested it. An aversion that stems neither from morals nor ethics but another equally ancient driver, disgust. As a child I never clamoured for drowned cereal or begged for milo at bedtime. An array of artificial options: strawberry, chocolate, banana, lime were offered as alternatives. But the taste does not subside no matter what pastel garment you clothe it in. Milk is not a solo act, it doesn’t even do well as a partner in crime. It is a culinary backup dancer at best. The show wouldn’t be right without it, but milk performs better when its flavour is usurped by other star players.
For much of history, milk did not stray far from the farm. Drunk only in its raw form, it did not take long to spoil. It was strained into cheese and yogurt or churned into butter. Imbibing raw milk was to flirt with danger, a potential dalliance with illness or even death. To be born in 1840s Manhattan was a roll of the dice with unfavourable odds. During this time, babies were fed ‘swill milk’. It came from bovines fed on the left-over slop of neighbouring breweries. Their teats produced blue tinged milk, dyed white and distributed by unscrupulous proprietors. Two-thirds of infants succumbed and milk became a pariah. Even with the advent of pasteurisation, people remained suspicious of milk for a long time. Pasteurisation saved us from sickness and death but also took away the flavour. Milk is either out to kill you, or deny your palate pleasure.
Take coffee. At a café, thrumming with a Sunday morning energy, pre-coital/mid-hangover/post-run couplings perch. The server sets a long black before me. A thin caramel wafer of foam giving forth a deep aroma that coalesces into a spiral column of steam. I must wait, contemplate, judge the exact moment I can partake without burning the flesh from my mouth. I’m an adrenaline junkie (of the caffeine variety). A lack of milk inures a need for patience that other customers seem to lack. Endless streams of flat whites, cappuccinos and lattes, with suggestively phallic foam art, go by. Their liquid gold drowned beneath a cascade of bland. Milky beverages give instant gratification but you cannot mull over them, lest they languish in lukewarm puddles. I think of teabags, flabby with milk, bobbing in a tan ocean. Tea is a drink to be held, rather than drunk, prepared but never finished. It’s held in perpetuity, in mugs around the world. Lying forgotten on mantles, bedsides and floors, milky contents abandoned. Only later to be poured out, a sad camel tone collecting at the bottom of a sink.
When it comes to our own milk, mothers seem to walk a knife edge. A woman gets chastised for breastfeeding in public as if maintaining ‘modesty’ is more important than nourishing your child. Mother’s milk is magic, infused with oxycontin and able to respond to the changing needs of the baby. This infant elixir can be a burden though, if not bountiful or it runs dry. We shame mothers for feeding their babies in sight of others and shame them again if they stop breastfeeding before society deems it acceptable. But at some point mother’s milk is replaced by another’s. We cross an invisible line into the domain of animal milk. I choose to remain in the trenches, unwilling to move into enemy territory. Refusing even the faux fur of milks: soy, rice, almond and oat. Insipid lipid wannabes.
There’s something, too, about its colour. White scatters all visible wavelengths of light. It’s an absence: of colour, of illumination. Milk is too white. Like that clinical porcelain of a fluorescent hospital bathroom. Or artificially brightened teeth exposed in a grimace (posing as a smile.) It’s whiter than the phosphorous graveyards on the Pacific island of Banaba, a homeland taken piece by piece, to nourish Aotearoa’s dairy and agriculture industry. Its people yielded to the mining of their whenua, while we yielded lucrative crops. We fertilised our land with pieces of theirs and built a dairy empire. It seems we’re good at drinking that which was meant for others.
The white phosphorous of Banaba, signed away by a single hand, led to its demise. Transformed into fertiliser spread across hungry fields, an ocean away from where it first formed. A white island, reflecting back the light. Its absence felt for generations by its people, displaced. Scattered across waves to Fiji, dispersed like droplets of spilled milk across the floor, to an artificial home.
