I thought milk was simply the food that mammal mothers fed their babies. It is that but there is much more to the story. See "Milk" by Kurlansky. The story of the human dispersion around the planet is connected with the special phenomenon of adults drinking milk. They shouldn't be able to, since it is food for infants but some branches of humanity retain their ability to digest milk past childhood.
Milk is connected to the human understanding that there exist many forms of life on the planet that are too small for human eyes to see. But "pasteurization" and other tools of safe food handling have changed what can be done with milk and where. About 8000 years ago, the process for making cheese from milk created a safer and more portable food. Of course, that was early groundwork for the later rise of Wisconsin's cheese industry and that of others.
Fast forward to today's human problems with body weight and fat, the obesity problem. It is often interesting when society or even science itself gets ideas wrong. There seems to be a growing movement toward more fat in the human diet. From 1950 or so until lately, a popular idea has been to avoid eating fat so that arteries and veins would be less likely to get clogged. My friend advised me to read the article "Arteriosclerosis as Clogged Pipes". I saw a reference to Dr. Sarah Hallberg's TED talk "First Ignore the Guidelines." She is cheerful, seems trustworthy and enthusiastic. She says avoid anything lo-fat or no-fat.
I was impressed yesterday to see an article in Time magazine on increasing sales of whole milk. We have drunk skim for years but I have been drinking whole milk with full fat lately. I have read repeatedly that fat is satiating and satisfying, and after a couple of weeks on whole milk, I found that I am indeed more satisfied, even to the point of being completely uninterested in more food beyond a normal or even smallish meal. My pants are a bit too big in the waist now.
