Every other Friday, we reach into our deep freezer and reheat an episode to serve up to you. We're calling these our Reheats. If you have a show you want reheated, send us an email or voice memo at hello@sporkful.com, and include your name, your location, which episode, and why.
We explore the history of an iconic American food couple — cereal and milk — with help from New York Times food correspondent Kim Severson and author Mark Kurlansky.
This episode originally aired on December 17, 2018 and was produced by Dan Pashman, Anne Saini, and Aviva Dekornfeld, edited by Gianna Palmer, and mixed by Dan Dzula. The Sporkful team now includes Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andres O'Hara, Nora Ritchie, and Jared O'Connell. This update was produced by Giana Palmer. Transcription by Emily Nguyen.
Interstitial music in this episode by Black Label Music:
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- “Soul Good” by Lance Conrad
Photo courtesy of Peter Remmers/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
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View Transcript
Dan Pashman: Hey everyone, Dan here with another reheat and I don't know if you noticed this but cereal has been a big area of focus in the last couple months. Back over the summer, we did a salad spinner with Josh Scherer and Nicole Enayati from Mystical Kitchen — talked about the Kelce brothers' cereal and different kinds of cereal mixing techniques. Then it came up again just a few days ago in our Taco Bell episode when I pitched my idea for a baklava cereal to the product developers from Taco Bell and Cheez-It. So I figured why stop now? Let's devote a whole episode to cereal and milk.
Dan Pashman: In this episode, I dive deep into both, with Kim Severson of The New York Times and author Mark Kurlansky.
Dan Pashman: Kim, of course, I got to hang out with her on stage during my Atlanta event when I was on book tour ... And Mark, man, since he came on our show in 2018 to talk about his book Milk!, he has written five more non-fiction books, including one all about salmon. Incredible.
Dan Pashman: As always, remember that if there’s an episode you want us to pull out of the deep freezer, send me an email or voice memo at hello@sporkful.com. Include your first name, location, and which episode you’d like to reheat and why. All right, enjoy the show.
Dan Pashman: So when you're eating your bowl of Raisin Bran, what's your system ...
Kim Severson: Well ...
Dan Pashman: To maintain optimal texture throughout the bowl.
Kim Severson: Right. Well, what I do — one thing is that it's a ratio. First of all, make sure you don't have too much milk — but enough milk cause you don't want to have not enough milk at the end, so that's one key thing. The other key thing is I pour the milk on the side of the bowl, so you don't pour it over the flakes.
Dan Pashman: Yes.
Dan Pashman: This is Kim Severson, she’s a food writer for The New York Times, based in Atlanta. And among the many topics she covers, she often writes about cereal, because Kim thinks a lot about cereal.
Kim Severson: I tend to eat and try to pull the cereal from the bottom of the bowl up, and so then the flakes that are on the top kind of slowly settle down into the milk that's left. And if you do it just right, you can keep that crunch throughout the whole bowl. You don't stir it — for certainly, you don't stir it. I mean, this is just — I'm not a professional but that's how I eat it.
Dan Pashman: No, but Kim ... Kim ... Don't diminish yourself.
Kim Severson: [LAUGHS] Own my deep cereal ...
Dan Pashman: That was one of the most fantastic descriptions of a great way to eat a bowl of cereal, so I think that you are an expert.
Kim Severson: Thank you.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: Today on The Sporkful, it’s part two of our holiday gift guide. We're featuring recent books about food history and culture. This week, we’re diving into two foods that have been together a long and surprising history together — cereal.
CLIP (KIM SVERSON): Cereal comes up in all kinds of crazy ways.
Dan Pashman: And milk ...
CLIP (MARK KURLANSKY): I would have loved to have been there at that moment in history when there was this baby and no mother to provide milk and what do we do, what do we do when somebody says, "How about that goat over there?"
Dan Pashman: That’s all coming up. Stick around.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: This is The Sporkful, it’s not for foodies, it’s for eaters. I’m Dan Pashman. Each week on our show we obsess about food to learn more about people. Like I said, this is part two of our holiday gift guide series. We’re featuring books about food history and culture.
Dan Pashman: This show's fare is a little lighter — cereal, and milk. And we’ll start with cereal because you put the milk in the bowl before the cereal, right? Unless you're very low on milk, in which case you want to pour the milk into the bowl first to see how much you have, that way you can only add the right amount of cereal to go with that amount of milk — ratios.
Dan Pashman: You know, there's nothing more demoralizing than, like, pouring yourself a big bountiful of cereal and then you go to pour the milk on top, and you get this little ... bloop. But it, like, managed to get all the cereal wet, so you can't put it back in the box, but you don't have the right ratios. It's the worst! Right? Right.
Dan Pashman: Okay, But I digress. Cereal. Joining me now is someone I’m very excited to have on the show. I have admired her work for many years and I’ve referenced her so many times on the show. It’s really a crime that we haven’t had her on yet. Kim Severson is a southern-based correspondent who covers a wide range of food culture topics for The New York Times. She’s written about cereal trends, and she was part of the team that won a Pulitzer prize last year for their excellent coverage of sexual harassment and assault in the wake of #MeToo.
Dan Pashman: Hey Kim. How are you?
Kim Severson: Hey, I'm good! I'm good.
Dan Pashman: I’m very excited to talk with you about this book, The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek, by Professor Howard Markel. We were supposed to also be joined by Professor Markel but he got sick, get well soon Howard. But what I lack, Kim, in Ph.d. 's, I will attempt to make up for with my enthusiasm for this story. Because I read this book. I have always been super fascinated with John Harvey Kellogg in particular. So I’ll take the lead telling that part of the story of cereal, and then when we get to it, around 1950, like the modern era of cereal, you’ll take the reins. Because in addition to all your fantastic reporting on very serious issues for The New York Times, it seems to me you also own the cereal beat …
Kim Severson: I have been on a cereal beat for some time.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]
Kim Severson: I'm a cereal aficionado. And like you, I've really been interested in America's crazy health trends. And so the Kelloggs, of course, as you know, started cereal as sort of like the Gwyneth Paltrow movement of their time, right?
Dan Pashman: Right, exactly. Like John Harvey Kellogg, I feel like was the Dr. Oz of ...
Kim Severson: Ah, nice way to put it.
Dan Pashman: ... the late 1800s. The sort of — he was very famous. He was like this health guru. And we should just take one step back here cause at the time Kellogg was coming up, he wasn't the only one who invented cereal. But you gotta understand this was against a backdrop of, like, a widespread problem in America, which was indigestion.
Kim Severson: Well, it's interesting to me because it feels like we have always had indigestion.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]
Kim Severson: But it was a — there was a lot of focus on the gastrointestinal system back in the 1850s and '60s.
Dan Pashman: I’m gonna jump in here and move our story along a bit.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: So John Harvey Kellogg was a charismatic doctor, he was a member of the Seventh-day Adventist church, and he preached vegetarianism, exercise, no alcohol or caffeine, lots of fresh air, all of which was pretty revolutionary at the time.
Dan Pashman: Quick note here if you’re listening with kids, you might want to skip ahead 30 seconds, because I do have to cover some more mature subject matter very briefly. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and the Seventh-Day Adventists also had some very bad ideas. For one, Kellogg was anti-masturbation to the point that at times he endorsed genital mutilation of young men and women. So there’s that.
Dan Pashman: The Seventh-day Adventists opened a sanitarium, in Battle Creek, Michigan. A sanitarium is basically a health spa. They put Kellogg in charge of the place and he made the dining hall the central focus. That’s where he’d try out all kinds of health foods he was working on. This is where he invented granola, and it’s where he developed wheat flakes. This sanitarium was a huge deal, thousands of people from all over the country flocked there. Even, as I told Kim, celebrities like Amelia Earhart and Thomas Edison.
Kim Severson: Okay, I'm still reeling from the fact that Amelia Earhart and cereal, two subjects I love very much have just come together in the brain.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]
Kim Severson: And I'm processing that. But okay, let's move on.
Dan Pashman: So here somehow I want to — I'm curious to hear your take on, Kim. So around this time, Kellogg was not the only one. Henry Parson Crowell as an evangelical Christian businessman, he started Quaker Oats. And there was a technology that this other guy invented that Quaker bought a patent to to make puffed rice. It was, like, a puffer gun. It was actually even advertised early on, like the cereal made that's shot out of a gun. And I think it's interesting that there's a strong correlation with a lot of these guys who were kind of health and wellness gurus of the day, but they were also part of religious movements.
Kim Severson: It is interesting. There was another fellow, C.W. Post [Dan Pashman: Yes.] who created Grape Nuts and he had been a former patient. And then ...
Dan Pashman: A patient — sorry, but a patient of Kellogg’s.
Kim Severson: A patient at Kellogg's. Right, at the sanitarium.
Dan Pashman: Right, He went to the sanitarium. Right, right, right.
Kim Severson: And then, you know, a little bit later in the '30s, the Ralston Purina company had a version, introduced something — it was sort of like and early Wheat Chex, they called Shredded Ralston, and it was for followers of Ralstonism, which was a very racist social movement at the time that included this belief that you could control the minds of others. So by eating this healthful grain, this — eating a certain way, it was a way to kind of be a cultural marker for niche and religious-based movements of the time. Cereal comes up in all kinds of crazy ways. [LAUGHS] Is that our puritan — you know, just sort of the puritan roots of our country in that deprivation as a path to health?
Dan Pashman: That could be. That sounds ... That makes some sense to me. Is that what you think?
Kim Severson: I think there is something to that. You know, the idea that you have to suffer in order to gain some higher insights and get closer to God, as opposed to just something, like, pleasure as a way to spiritual enlightenment, which I'm trying to get that to catch on.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]
Kim Severson: I'm gonna start a cult.
Dan Pashman: Yeah. [LAUGHS]
Dan Pashman: Moving on in the story of Kellogg’s and my conversation with Kim, it’s time to introduce another pivotal character. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg had a younger brother — Will Kellogg. As kids, John Harvey bullied Will terribly. And in those early years, it did not seem Will was destined for greatness.
Dan Pashman: The parents were very biased. The parents saw that — you know, they thought that John Harvey was this promising, very charismatic person. They thought that Will was not gonna amount to anything. They sent him to work in a broom factory at age six.
Kim Severson: I'm feeling bad for Will.
Dan Pashman: Yes, you'll feel worse before you feel better.
Kim Severson: [LAUGHS]
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] So, Will, though, turned out to be pretty good at selling brooms. And eventually, John Harvey brought Will to work under him at the sanitarium and continued to treat him terribly there. He would make Will follow him around. The doctor would ride his bike around the campus of the sanitarium, while Will would have to jog alongside, taking dictation. And he even, when John would go to the bathroom, he would make his brother stand in the bathroom with him and continue to take dictation.
Kim Severson: Oh my goodness.
Dan Pashman: Right.
Kim Severson: Oh my goodness.
Dan Pashman: Which, if you've read the Robert Carro books, was also something that Linden Johnson [Kim Severson: Yes.] to his secretaries.
Kim Severson: Yes. Yes, that's what I actually was just recalling.
Dan Pashman: Yeah.
Kim Severson: I mean, could you imagine? I like privacy in those moments.
Dan Pashman: You have to really to be committed to making other people feel bad.
Kim Severson: Exactly. Exactly.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] And so ... But, in spite of ... And so they had a very bad relationship, but while the doctor had all these visionary ideas, he was a terrible manager and a terrible businessman. And Will ... Will turned out to be the genius. Will saw that the granola they had developed was very popular at the sanitarium. They were developing wheat flakes that were popular. Will built a business of mail-order so that the guests who came to the sanitarium could continue to receive monthly shipments of these things at home.
Kim Severson: Brilliant.
Dan Pashman: And it was Will who pushed — for a long time, he said, "We shouldn't be making the flakes out of wheat, we should make them out of corn," corn is cheaper and it's sweeter. People will like it more. And the doctor said no, it's not as healthy as wheat. But Will said, forget health, we're not just trying to heal sick people, we're trying to make some money here. People will like cornflakes.
Kim Severson: Mm-hmm.
Dan Pashman: And they finally had their explosive, you know, split. Will left, formed his own company. Began selling corn flakes under the Kellogg’s label and that led to 10 years of litigation between the two brothers.
Kim Severson: Ohhh, fanta — I'm kind of cheering for Will. It makes me want to go out and buy a box of cornflakes just because, like, go Will.
Dan Pashman: Right, right, right. So 10 years of litigation, it went to the Michigan State Supreme Court and Will wins! So now, if you go to Kellogs.com and the history, there is only scant mention of the doctor and it's all about W.K. Kellogg.
Kim Severson: Wow.
Dan Pashman: William K. Kellogg, the founder of Kellogg's.
Kim Severson: Wow.
Dan Pashman: And it was Will who invented Snap, Crackle, and Pop. It was Will who invented putting the toy in the cereal box.
Kim Severson: Right, right. Cause I — Kellogg's, that was their genius thing — the in-box prizes.
Dan Pashman: Right.
Kim Severson: Right.
Dan Pashman: And that was not only a great marketing tool, cause kids love prizes — and because, you know, Will came up with this idea of marketing to the kids to the kids to go to the parents and buy it, but the toy they put in the box took up space. So you put less cereal in the box and the cereal is more expensive than the toy.
Kim Severson: Ohh, genius!
Dan Pashman: Right?!
Kim Severson: Oh! Is this guy just — like is he an evil genius or he an awesome underdog? How does history remember him?
Dan Pashman: Um, history remembers him pretty well. I mean, he founded the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, which does a lot of good works. He was certainly a visionary businessman, but here's the coda to this story, Kim. So the brothers never really got along again. The doctor continued to run the sanitarium. Will continued to grow Kellogg's into the company that we know today. Five years after the doctor's death, Will received a letter from his brother that his brother had written years earlier, but it wasn't sent because the doctor's assistant, who recorded the dictation, felt that it was beneath the dignity of this once great man to apologize, essentially.
Kim Severson: [GASPS] He got an apology letter [Dan Pashman: Yes.] five years after his death?
Dan Pashman: Right, So five years after Dr. John Harvey Kellogg died, Will got a letter and part of it reads, "It was the greatest possible misfortune to the work that circumstances arose which led you and me in different channels and separated our interests. I am sure that you are right in regard to the food business. Your better-balanced judgment has doubtless saved you from a vast number of mistakes of the sort I have made and allowed you to achieve magnificent successes for which generations to come will owe you gratitude. I earnestly desire to make amends for any wrong or injustice that I have done to you.”
Kim Severson: Amazing. I'm completely obsessed with the loyal aid who would not allow ...
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] Right.
Kim Severson: Who was sitting on his or her self of self-righteous indignation and would not allow the boss to send the letter to the brother apologizing? It's fascinating.
Dan Pashman: Mm-hmm.
Kim Severson: And sort of sad, really.
Dan Pashman: It is. And in their last in-person meeting came after the doctor thought the letter had been sent.
Kim Severson: Ohh. And so, he's like, dude, I apologized and you're still being a jerk.
Dan Pashman: Right.
Kim Severson: Oh my gosh. This just sounds like so many relationships I've had.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]
Kim Severson: Wow.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] Let's take a minute. Kim, tell me about one of those.
[LAUGHING]
Kim Severson: Oh my God. The misunderstandings. The, "but, wait, I meant to say I was sorry and you didn't hear that?", and you know? The list is too lengthy, really, for us to get into ...
Dan Pashman: Right.
Kim Severson: Here on the podcast.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]
Kim Severson: I cannot go through the list of all my former hostages — I mean, partners, I got to say.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: Will Kellogg died in 1951. And while he certainly pushed cereal in a sweeter direction, away from its health food roots, it wasn’t until after he passed away that we got this:
[CLIP FROSTED FLAKES AD]
CLIP (TONY THE TIGER]: Hello there, Giller. Welcome to the gym!
CLIP (KID): Gee, you're Tony the Tiger!
CLIP (TONY THE TIGER): That's right, from Kellogg's sugar-frosted flakes. They're crisp flakes of corn with a secret sugar frosting. Have them with milk or cream. They're jumping with energy!
CLIP (KID): They're good.
CLIP (TONY THE TIGER): Good? They’re Gr-r-reat!
Kim Severson: We cannot let these guys off the hook for starting the — you know, unleashing the monster that is cereal marketing. I mean, the '50s — like so many processed food items, the 1950s was sort of the birthplace of all of that. We had soldiers returning from World War II. We had suburbs booming. We had a lot of money. I think farmers were starting to produce a lot more grain. Certainly not as accelerated as it was in the '70s, but you had a whole bunch of food to sell to Americans who had a lot of money and cereal was a great way to do that. So sugar was kind of considered a great thing. We started eating a lot more sugar. So Tony the Tiger was born during this period. Frosted Flakes were invented ... And as you know, little kids started watching television and there were these television ads with Tony the Tiger and it's great. So I mean, that was like, boom, we were off to the races, right?
Dan Pashman: That's right. And tell me about some of your formative cereal moments?
Kim Severson: Well, they come a little later. So I ... And you know, I think people ... You could almost pinpoint when somebody grew up based on the cereal that they ate. I kind of came of age in a moment when, like, King Vitamin, which was a early '70s — I think it was only on the market for a couple years, and the ad was, [SINGS] "King Vitamin, have breakfast with the king ..."
[KING VITAMIN THEME SONG]
CLIP (KIDS): King Vitamin, have breakfast with the king. King Vitamin, have breakfast with the king. Get a sweet corn taste and all the vitamins you need.
CLIP (VOICEOVER): You have breakfast with the king. Get King Vitamin cereal.
CLIP (KIDS): Have breakfast with the King!
CLIP (PERSON): I did.
Dan Pashman: What was the cereal?
Kim Severson: It was kind of like a ... I feel like it was a little bit of a low-rent Cap'n Crunch in the shape of a little crown. Now that whole era moved in the early '70s into the late '70s and we get into this kind of the fruit-flavored monster era.
Dan Pashman: Right.
Kim Severson: So you might remember like Cocoa Pebbles and Fruity Pebbles. And they're like the late '70s, early '80s, like Franken Berry ...
Dan Pashman: Count Chocula ...
Kim Severson: Count Choc ... Are you a ... Like what is your childhood cereal?
Dan Pashman: I definitely remember Count Chocula, Boo Berry, Franken Berry …
Kim Severson: Right.
Dan Pashman: You know, we did an episode of The Sporkful years about those three — I did, like, a Halloween episode because ...
Kim Severson: Did you?
Dan Pashman: Because they were discontinuing them, then they were brought back, and now they're brought only limited editions around Halloween, but ...
Kim Severson: And you fall for that every year, don't you?
Dan Pashman: ... Yes. [LAUGHS]
Kim Severson: Okay. I love that about you. You're honest. This is a safe space, Dan.
Dan Pashman: Yeah, it is. Absolutely. [LAUGHS]
Kim Severson: Yeah. Yeah, but it is that cult-like, like certainly in the '80s, it was they pushed even further and started co-branding cereal. So you had, like, you know, Mr. T Cereal …
[CLIP MR. T CEREAL AD]
CLIP (MAN): [SINGS] Teaming up with Me. T golden sweet crispy T's, one bite and you're gonna be eaten with a team that's teaming up with Mr. T.
CLIP (MR. T): It's cool.
CLIP (MAN): [SINGS] Teaming up with Mr. T.
Dan Pashman: I wonder ... Obviously, there was marketing in other foods, but I feel like maybe cereal, part of what makes it unique in this respect, is that you just listed off the top of your head probably 50 different brands of cereal, all those cereals were made with the minor variations of a handful of different ingredients, like they're not radically different flavors.
Kim Severson: No. I mean, it's — you know, it's corn or it's wheat or it's rice and it's made into a dough and it's shaped into something else and has a certain crunch. But eating cereal is a super personal thing, right? Like, and I do admire the ability of cereal makers to know that I — you know, like, I like – it's this, like, race to keep it crunchy for me in a cereal. Like Rais — like, I like Raisin Bran a lot, but I don't like it when it gets mushy. So it's that moment where I've got the cold milk, the slight ... slightly moistened but still crunchy flake, and eating that like that ... That mouthfeel and crunch and texture thing which makes me want to dip back for another spoonful and another spoonful. You know, some food scientists in some lab, they engineered that. They made it — they're like, they know my pleasure points and my brain and they drilled down and they figured it out.
Dan Pashman: So Kim, I want to wrap up with a pop quiz because one thing that cereal companies have been trying to do to boost sales is to take cereal out of breakfast. They turn it into these snack bars, they're putting it in all different things ...
Kim Severson: Right. Mm-hmm.
Dan Pashman: So they can sell more cereal and get people eating it at all different times of day. So I've come up with a couple of cereal pairings combining different classic cereals that I think could make new desserts.
Kim Severson: Okay.
Dan Pashman: I'm gonna tell you the cereal combos and I want you to try to guess what the dessert is [Kim Severson: Uh-oh.] that these cereals come together to make.
Kim Severson: Okay.
Dan Pashman: Ready? There's no pressure here. We're not judging you.
Kim Severson: [LAUGHS]
Dan Pashman: You're already a Pulitzer Prize winner, Kim. You have nothing to lose.
Kim Severson: Falling to — Like career's over cause I failed a cereal quiz.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] All right, Count Chocula or Chocolate Lucky Charms plus Golden Grahams.
Kim Severson: So that's like a s'more?
Dan Pashman: Yes! That's right. You got chocolate, marshmallow, and you got, like, the graham cracker — that's s'mores. All right, next one: Apple Jacks plus Cinnamon Toast Crunch plus Cracklin' Oat Bran.
Kim Severson: Uh, that's like an apple crisp!
Dan Pashman: Apple — oh my god! This is — you see, this is why she is Kim Sverson from The New York Times, you guys.
Kim Severson: That sounds delicious.
Dan Pashman: Two for Two. All right, this is the last one. And this one's gonna get a little tougher now, Kim.
Kim Severson: Ohh.
Dan Pashman: Frosted Mini Wheats plus Honey Bunches of Oats plus a sprinkle of pistachios.
Kim Severson: Ahh, baklava.
Dan Pashman: Oh my god!
Kim Severson: [LAUGHS]
Dan Pashman: Three for three.
Kim Severson: Three!
Dan Pashman: Three for three! [LAUGHS] She's unstoppable. [LAUGHS]
MUSIC
Kim Severson: Are you gonna — I'm not gonna get your voice on my answering machine, like Carl Kasell used to do?
Dan Pashman: Kim, you didn't have to get this quiz right for that. I'll do that anytime! Anytime.
Kim Severson: Okay, I'm a hold you to that.
Dan Pashman: All right. Kim Severson of The New York Times. Thank you so much. Congratulations on all your fantastic work and enjoy that next bowl of Raisin Bran.
Kim Severson: I'm actually gonna probably go mess one up this afternoon,
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] All right, right. Take care.
Kim Severson: Bye.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: That's Kim Sverson of The New York Times. Kim has written about the recent decline in cereal sales, which she says is mostly due to anti-sugar, anti-carb, and anti-gluten trends, especially among millennials. Plus, people are eating breakfast on the go more or skipping it entirely. But Kim says she thinks cereal will make a comeback. It’s too ingrained to disappear.
Dan Pashman: The book that was the inspiration for my conversation with Kim is The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek by Howard Markel. Howard, feel better soon.
Dan Pashman: So that’s cereal. But what would cereal be without milk? Coming up, we’ll find out why about half of all humans are mutants when we hear from author Mark Kurlansky. He drank every kind of milk he could find while working on his latest book:
CLIP (MARK KURLANSKY): Cow? Goat? Sheep? Buffalo ...
Dan Pashman: We’ll talk about some of those milks ...
CLIP (MARK KURLANSKY): Camel ...
Dan Pashman: After the break.
CLIP (MARK KURLANSKY): ... I'm leaving something out.
CLIP (DAN PASHMAN): Yak?
CLIP (MARK KURLANSKY): Uh, yak! Yes.
Dan Pashman: Stick around.
CLIP (MARK KURLANSKY): I've actually never had donkey milk.
MUSIC
+++BREAK+++
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: Welcome back to The Sporkful, I’m Dan Pashman. Now October is National Pasta Month and I plan to celebrate in style with Anything's Pastable events all over the country and across the border up north. October 8th, I'll be in Brooklyn doing a special one-night-only dinner with Edy's Grocer. I'm doing a virtual cooking class with Milk Street. You can join that from anywhere. We're gonna cook up the keema bolognese that Asha Loupy and I worked on, plus the kimchi carbonara. And the great thing about that is if you’ve signed up for the class, you can watch it whenever it's convenient for you. I'll be doing a pasta masterclass in Las Vegas in October. And then, also Toronto! Finally, yes, I know we have so many listeners in Toronto. It's really travesty that I haven't been up there. But our first ever event in Canada cooking, eating, talking — Chef Anthony Rose and I will be in conversation at the Prosserman JCC in Toronto. I want to see you there. And then it all wraps up in Canandaigua, New York where I'll be doing a cooking class and also a talk. Lots of fun stuff happening, so please go to sporkful.com/events for details and tickets. Again, sporkful.com/events. Happy National Pasta Month! All right, let's get back to the Reheat.
Dan Pashman: Let’s get right into my conversation with Mark Kurlansky. He’s written more than a dozen books, many of them about food. He’s best known for the best sellers Salt, and Cod. Now he’s got a new one: Milk. So I sort of think of Milk as the capstone in the trilogy of Mark Kurlansky single food word title books. But as I said to Mark, I notice that Milk has an exclamation point at the end.
Mark Kurlansky: I did that.
[LAUGHING]
Mark Kurlansky: I said to them, "I don't want to do another one of these one-word titles that are just like all the rest." And then they said, "No, you have to. You have to."
Dan Pashman: Okay.
Mark Kurlansky: Finally, I said, "Okay, but you have to use an exclamation point."
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: That was the compromise?
Mark Kurlansky: Right.
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: So Mark’s new book is not called Milk. It’s called Milk! And as it makes clear, the fact that so many of us drink milk is a little weird.
Mark Kurlansky: Mammals are set up to drink their mother's milk for nutrition for their early life, or about two years in the case of humans. It varies from animal to animal. And all that is normal. Then a couple of weird things happened. One is that you have mothers who can't or don't want to produce milk and you have babies who don't have mothers. Then what do you do? So I would have loved to have been there at that moment in history when there was this baby and no mother to provide milk and what do we do? What do we do? And somebody says, "How about that goat over there?"
[LAUGHING]
Mark Kurlansky: An extraordinary moment!
Dan Pashman: Is that the leading theory as to how humans came to be drinking other animals' milk?
Mark Kurlansky: Yeah. Yeah.
Dan Pashman: As babies, humans produce an enzyme called lactase, which helps us digest the lactose in milk while we’re breastfeeding. But around age two, when we’re no longer breastfeeding, most of us stop producing lactase. And then we can’t digest lactose. In other words, we’re supposed to be lactose intolerant. It’s only because of a genetic mutation that about 40 percent of the adults in the world can drink milk.
Dan Pashman: So those of us who can drink milk as adults are the mutants.
Mark Kurlansky: We're the mutants. We're the oddballs.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]
Mark Kurlansky: And people who are lactose intolerant are ... you know, they're supposed to be.
Dan Pashman: And so 40 percent of us are not lactose intolerant, but I feel like a much —the percentage — I mean, this is unscientific, but if I look at all the adults that I know and the adults that I know are lactose intolerant, it's much less than 60 percent.
Mark Kurlansky: That's because you're hanging out with white people.
Dan Pashman: Okay, go on.
Mark Kurlansky: You know? It's kind of geographic. Native Americans are almost all lactose intolerant. Most Black Africans, except the Maasai, who are cattle herders, are lactose intolerant. And so, you know, most African Americans are lactose intolerant. You know, the Romans, when they first went into northern Europe and they saw all these people drinking milk, they said, oh, you know, these people are really backwards. The Romans liked to think everybody was backward, but this was a good reason to think it because in Rome, only farmers drank milk because farmers could get it fresh enough so that it was safe. But, you know, this happens everywhere in the world, something that is only done by farmers is considered backwards. So they very much look down upon people who drank milk, or butter actually.
Dan Pashman: I feel like you can identify a butter olive oil line.
Mark Kurlansky: Yes, absolutely, you can. And in Italy, it's around Emilia-Romagna.
Dan Pashman: Mediterranean — anything that you consider Mediterranean is olive oil country.
Mark Kurlansky: Yes.
Dan Pashman: And when you get into, like, northern Europe [Mark Kurlansky: Right.] that's butter country.
Mark Kurlansky: Right.
Dan Pashman: And why is that?
Mark Kurlansky: Well, partly because they didn't have olives, you know?
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: And cows are mostly a cold weather ...
Mark Kurlansky: Yes.
Dan Pashman: A cooler weather animal.
Mark Kurlansky: Yes.
Dan Pashman: The Romans even had a derisive name for those northern Europeans. They called them "Butter Eaters". This reminds me of Dr. Seuss’s Butter Battle Book. Remember that one? That's the one where the Yooks and the Zooks come to the brink of nuclear war over whether you should eat your bread with the butter side up or the butter side down. Side note: The Zooks, who eat it butter side down, are correct.
Dan Pashman: Anyway, as Mark said, a big reason why only farmers drank milk in Roman times was that they were the only ones who could get it fresh from a cow. Otherwise, milk was really dangerous to drink. In the 17 and 1800s, it killed a lot of people. If someone got sick and died suddenly, one of the first questions people would ask is: Did that guy drink any milk recently? Milk may even have killed one of our presidents.
Mark Kurlansky: Yeah, Zachary Taylor died inexplicitly after inaugurating The Washington Monument and having a nice tall glass of milk.
Dan Pashman: You know, it was middle of summer. It was hot ...
Mark Kurlansky: Right.
Dan Pashman: And he was — he actually dug the cornerstone himself.
Mark Kurlansky: Yeah, yeah.
Dan Pashman: This was a different time, clearly.
Mark Kurlansky: Well, yeah. He was sort of a macho military guy.
Dan Pashman: Right, a swashbuckler.
Mark Kurlansky: Right.
Dan Pashman: Old, rough, and ready.
Mark Kurlansky: Right.
Dan Pashman: And he was hot?
Mark Kurlansky: That was it for old, rough, and ready.
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: So he dug the cornerstone. It was hot out. He drank a nice cold glass of milk and a couple days later, he was a goner.
Mark Kurlansky: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: And so was it, when Zachary Taylor died, was there a suspicion that it was the milk?
Mark Kurlansky: Yes.
Dan Pashman: Did people understand that?
Mark Kurlansky: Yeah, well a lot of people suspect — cause a lot of people suspected milk in general.
Dan Pashman: And so our bodies aren't made to continue drinking this milk into adulthood. You get into the mid-1800s and more and more people are getting sick and dying from drinking milk and they know that it's the milk. And yet, they keep drinking milk into adulthood. Why?
Mark Kurlansky: Because it's healthy. [LAUGHS] I mean, it makes no sense.
Dan Pashman: That was the logic there.
Mark Kurlansky: You know, it was always thought that milk was healthy for babies. And oh, if it's good for babies, why wouldn't it be good for all of us? It's a cultural belief and one that was greatly promoted by dairy producers, and still is. You know, there's still the American Dairy Association. People are always telling you how milk makes your kids big and strong. It actually doesn't, you know? And this whole thing about getting athletes to talk about all the milk that they drink ... I don't think that they do, actually.
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: Milk remained dangerous to drink until the invention of pasteurization — that was the big turning point. Pasteurization is a process where you heat the milk to kill the bacteria and other microbes that can make people sick. The process became pretty standard for milk in America in the early 20th century — right around the time the Kellogg brothers were creating the first mass-produced cereals.
Dan Pashman: As we heard earlier, before the Kelloggs, common breakfasts were pudding, porridge, oats, various grains and things that were basically cooked into mush. And often they involved milk. So it was natural that when cornflakes came on the scene, people poured milk on top.
Dan Pashman: Since then, both cereal and milk have changed a lot. But, according to Mark, not all those changes have been for the better.
Mark Kurlansky: I grew up on non-homogenized milk, what today is called cream-lined milk but was then called milk.
[LAUGHING]
Mark Kurlansky: And it came in a bottle and the cream was in the upper third and you shook the bottle and it was great. And the milkman delivered it in a metal case. And ...
Dan Pashman: With glass bottles.
Mark Kurlansky: With glass bottles, yeah.
Dan Pashman: Like a metal case full of glass bottles.
Mark Kurlansky: Right.
Dan Pashman: Did your milkman wear an all-white outfit with one of those caps?
Mark Kurlansky: You know, I remember it that way but I don't know if it's true.
[LAUGHING]
Mark Kurlansky: So I was one of four siblings and so every morning we'd all have a big glass of milk. And suddenly, the milk wasn't any good and we complained to mom. And she tried different places and milk just wasn't any good anymore. And what had happened was it was all homogenized.
Dan Pashman: So for someone who's never had cream-lined milk, what makes it so good? Why is it better than "regular milk"?
Mark Kurlansky: Well, for one reason it has the natural amount of cream, which homogenized milk never does. You know, whole milk, 4%, that is less than a cow produces. [LAUGHS] You know, they're cheating us a little in this stuff. And of course, you can do that cause we don't see it.
Dan Pashman: Right. And so homogenization emulsifies? Would that be the right word?
Mark Kurlansky: Yes.
Dan Pashman: It emulsifies the fat into the rest of the milk [Mark Kurlansky: Yeah.] so that they're not separated, but in the process, it takes some of that fat out.
Mark Kurlansky: Right, but it makes it a product that's much easier to work with industrially because there's no separation.
Dan Pashman: Right. And is the main reason why it's not as good is just because it has less fat?
Mark Kurlansky: I don't know. I mean, that would be one of the reasons. It's not about an additive or anything, you know? It could be because it's the milk I had when I was a kid and they don't have it now.
Dan Pashman: Mark, do you eat cereal these days? Are you a breakfast cereal kind of guy sometimes?
Mark Kurlansky: No.
Dan Pashman: Not a big cereal guy?
Mark Kurlansky: No, I don't think I ever was.
Dan Pashman: So all these years, you've been so captivated with milk, and yet you have not been eating it on cereal.
Mark Kurlansky: No, that's true. I love cheese. I eat a lot of cheese.
Dan Pashman: Why do you think there are no cheese-based breakfast cereals?
Mark Kurlansky: Well, in the world of industrial food, there are really only two flavors. There's sweet and salty. And cereal is sweet. You know, and cheese is salty, so ...
Dan Pashman: Right.
Mark Kurlansky: I think that's why that doesn't happen.
Dan Pashman: So the system is not built to handle so revolutionary [Mark Kurlansky: Right.] as cheesy breakfast cereal. Like why not? That seems like a no-brainer, right?
Mark Kurlansky: Yeah, like, you know, orange and yellow, cheese sparkles or something ...
Dan Pashman: Yes!
Mark Kurlansky: Right? [LAUGHS]
Dan Pashman: Yeah, the branding writes itself.
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Dan Pashman: That’s Mark Kurlansky. His new book is Milk — or I should say Milk! Okay, if you go to your local bookstore and you ask them if they have Milk, they're gonna be like, no, we don't have — we haven't heard of that book. But if you ask them for Milk! Then they'll point you right in the right direction.
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Dan Pashman: And hey, did you know that you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? Then there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to SiriusXM.com/sporkful. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
