What is milk?
A: Milk is a nutrient-rich, white liquid food produced by the mammary glands
of mammals.
It is the primary source of nutrition for what?
A: Infant mammals (including humans who are breastfed) before they are able
to digest other types of food.
Early-lactation milk contains colostrum, which does
what?
A: It carries the mother's antibodies to its young and can reduce the risk
of many diseases.
It contains many other nutrients including what?
A: Protein and lactose.
Interspecies consumption of milk is not what?
A: Uncommon, particularly among humans, many of whom consume the milk of
other mammals.
As an agricultural product, milk, also called dairy
milk, is extracted from farm
animals during or soon after what?
A: Pregnancy.
Dairy farms produced how much milk in 2011, from 260
million dairy cows?
A: About 730 million tons.
What country is the world's largest producer of milk?
A: India.
India is also the leading exporter of skimmed milk
powder, yet it exports few other what?
A: Milk products.
The ever-increasing rise in domestic demand for dairy
products and a large demand-supply gap could lead to India being a what in
the future?
A: A net importer of dairy products.
New Zealand, Germany and the Netherlands are the
largest what?
A: Exporters of milk products.
China and
Russia were the world's largest importers of
milk and milk products until when?
A: 2016 when both countries became self-sufficient, contributing to a
worldwide glut of milk.
Throughout the world, how many people consume milk and
milk products?
A: More than six billion.
How many people live in dairy farming households?
A: Over 750 million.
A substance secreted by pigeons to feed their young is
called what?
A: "crop milk" and bears some resemblance to mammalian milk, although it is
not consumed as a milk substitute.
In English, the word "milk" has been used to refer to
what?
A: "milk-like plant juices" since 1200 AD.
Traditionally a variety of non-dairy products have been
described with the word milk, including what traditional digestive remedies?
A: Milk of magnesia and milk of bismuth.
Latex, the complex inedible emulsion that exudes from
the stems of certain plants, is generally described as what?
A: Milky and is often sold as "rubber milk" because of its white appearance.
The word latex itself is deducted from the Spanish word
for what?
A: Milk.
In the European Union, words such as milk,
butter,
cheese, cream and
yogurt are
legally restricted to what?
A: Animal products, with exceptions such as
coconut milk, almond milk,
peanut butter, and
ice cream.
Production of milk substitutes from vats of brewer's
yeast is under development by organizations including whom?
A: Impossible Foods, Muufri, and the biohacker group Real
Vegan Cheese.
Milk consumption occurs in what two distinct overall
types?
A: A natural source of nutrition for all infant mammals and a food product
obtained from other mammals for consumption by humans of all ages.
In almost all mammals, milk is fed to infants through
what?
A: Breastfeeding, either directly or by expressing the milk to be stored and
consumed later.
The early milk from mammals is called what?
A: Colostrum.
Colostrum contains antibodies that provide protection
to the newborn baby as well as what?
A: Nutrients and growth factors.
For humans, the World
Health Organization recommends
exclusive breastfeeding for how long?
A: Six months and breastfeeding in addition to other food for up to two
years of age or more.
In some cultures, it is common to breastfeed children
for how long?
A: Three to five years, and the period may be longer.
Fresh goats' milk is sometimes substituted for breast
milk, which introduces what risk?
A: The risk of the child developing electrolyte imbalances, metabolic
acidosis, megaloblastic anemia, and a host of allergic reactions.
What is the dominant breed in industrialized dairy
farms today?
A: The Holstein Friesian cattle.
In many cultures, especially in the West, humans
continue to consume milk beyond what?
A: Infancy, using the milk of other mammals (especially cattle, goats and
sheep) as a food product.
Initially, the ability to digest milk was limited to
whom?
A: Children as adults did not produce lactase, an enzyme necessary for
digesting the lactose in milk.
People therefore converted milk to curd, cheese and
other products to do what?
A: To reduce the levels of lactose.
Thousands of years ago, a chance mutation spread in
human populations in Europe that enabled what?
A: The production of lactase in adulthood.
This mutation allowed milk to be used as a what?
A: A new source of nutrition which could sustain populations when other food
sources failed.
Milk is processed into a variety of products such as
what?
A: Cream, butter, yogurt, kefir, ice cream, and cheese.
Whole milk, butter and cream have high levels of what?
A: Saturated fat.
The sugar lactose is found only in milk, forsythia
flowers, and a few what?
A: Tropical shrubs.
The enzyme needed to digest lactose, lactase, reaches
its highest levels where?
A: In the human small intestine after birth and then begins a slow decline
unless milk is consumed regularly.
The growth in urban population, coupled with the
expansion of the railway network in the mid-19th century, brought about a
revolution in what?
A: Milk production and supply.
When was the first glass bottle packaging used for
milk?
A: It was used in the 1870s.
The first company to do so may have been what?
A: The New York Dairy Company in 1877.
The Express Dairy Company in England began glass bottle
production when?
A: In 1880.
In 1884, Hervey Thatcher, an American inventor from New
York, invented what?
A: A glass milk bottle which was sealed with a waxed paper disk.
In 1932, what were introduced?
A: Plastic-coated paper milk cartons.
In 1863, French chemist and biologist Louis Pasteur
invented what?
A: Pasteurization, a method of killing harmful
bacteria in beverages and
food products.