Since the early 1800s, milk has been hailed as a perfect food, providing many of the nutritional elements necessary for life.

In “Nature’s Perfect Food: How Milk Became America’s Drink,” E. Melanie DuPuis questions the perfection of milk and examines the many institutions and social attitudes that people have toward this now ubiquitous beverage.

DuPuis starts from the beginning, when milk came to prominence as a part of the American diet early in the 19th century. In earlier times, milk was a minimal component of nutrition, mainly because of its highly perishable nature.

With the advent of new technologies, however, fluid milk became more and more important in the diet of Americans, particularly children, and gradually replaced breastfeeding as the main source of nutrition for babies.

Social and cultural ideals also played a large part in the rise of milk consumption. The Victorian idealization of the child, evolution and industrialization all had a hand in creating milk as “nature’s perfect food” in the eyes of American society.

The rise in demand for milk drastically changed the dairy farm and farming in general. Because of the dangerousness of contaminated milk, a large institutional arrangement for the regulation of milk became necessary and a large industrial complex was favored over small, decentralized dairy farming.

DuPuis posits that the regulation of milk was more of a product of urban control over rural policies and the view that farmers had a duty to feed the cities and provide food that was safe and nutritious.

She also examines the current state of the milk industry, its regulation, and the increase in size of dairy farms and intensity of milking over the past century. DuPuis provides examples of alternative dairy farming and analyzes anti-milk drinking rhetoric and politics.

“Nature’s Perfect Food” mirrors other popular sociological texts like “Fast Food Nation” in the way it examines food and how it shapes and is shaped by our culture. DuPuis attempts to completely explore the American attitude toward milk from the nascence of the product, and does so exhaustively.

DuPuis comes off as almost wholly impartial, questioning why we drink milk and why we regard it as perfect without taking a side on the issue of whether we should drink milk or not. She touches lightly on the benefits and dangers of milk consumption, but leaves this question alone for the most part.

Almost every aspect of milk, from how it is produced to what discourse exists regarding its nutritional and cultural value, is given equal space by DuPuis. Her thesis is to discuss the story of milk as a perfect food, and she sticks to this without fail.

“Nature’s Perfect Food” looks at milk through a sociological lens, and in doing so combines concepts and events that one would not normally consider in thinking about the history of milk. For example, she invokes the advent of evolution and survival of the fittest to describe a way in which Americans rationalized milk consumption as a way to attain the perfect, or “most evolved” body.

Though the book is intellectually demanding, thoroughly researched and intensely specific, DuPuis is descriptive without being verbose. “Nature’s Perfect Food” is anything but dry; however, in reading it one should be prepared to be challenged and engage in serious questioning about how they think about food, consumption, society, capitalism and industry.