The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1897-01-20
AGRICULTURAL.
Milk as Human Food.


and coffee containing no nutriment,
and refuse to drink as an everyday
beverage milk and skim milk, which
contains large amount of the most
valuable nutriment? Go into the farm
homes of Vermont and you will find
teapot, coffee.pot, or pitcher OF
cold water on the table, but how sell
dom, even on the tables of the largest
producers of milk, do you find a big
pitcher of milk set out for all who like
to drink. Even when there is alarge
family of children they drink either
cold water or tea or coffee. We do not
know of any reliable medical authority
who advises tea or coffee for children.
On the contrary, physicians unite in
condemning these as suitable drinks for
the young, and medical science seems
to be tending towards the condemna-
ton of these beverages for most adults.
These beverages are fashionable, peo-
pie get into the habit OF using them
and letting the children use them, and
it is not fashionable to use milk, and
especially skim milk as beverage.
That is the cause of the common prac-
tice. 1t would be slur on family to
say that they used skim milk, such is
the ignorance of the teachings Of sci
ence on the part of too many Of our
people.
OF course water is by far the best
general beverage, but almost the only
time when it should not be freely used
is at meal time or when food is being
eaten. Ice water is then especially OBJ
jectionable. On the other hand, milk
is all the better as food for being
mixed with harder food substance.
In chewing the hard food, we mix the
saliva with the milk and this is better
than rapidly swallowing it down. Those
who were fortunate enough to listen
to the addresses of Miss Anna Bsrrows
and Major Alvord at the meeting of
the dairymen this year, or the address
of Professor Atwater last year learned
something of the great value of milk as
human food. If the dairymen can only
get milk, and especially skim milk, in
troduced as a fashionable article OF
diet in Vermont homes, not only farm
homes, but in town, city, and village
homes, they will have accomplished
good work not only for themselves, but
also for the people. II part, say a
large part of the money which is sent
out of this state for tea and coffee,
could be expended at home for milk, it
would be vastly better both for con-
sumers and producers. And if the
farmers would learn this same lesson of
using milk in place of foreign bever-
ages, their pocket books would be fat
ter and their bodies healthier.
MR.. CURRIERS' CERTIFIED MILK.
One of the greatest obstacles to the
more general use of milk as human
food is the lack of pure milk. The Or
binary milk supply of cities is liable to
COMMUNICATIONS from several sources.
1t may be pure or not adulterated with
foreign substances, not watered, and
yet be very impure. There may be in
it the germs of disease, typhoid fever,
tuberculosis, ETC.; it may contain var-
GUS other impurities which cause it to
be unfit for human food. Physicians
have felt the need of truly pure milk to
prescribe for infants and invalids, and
this has led to the production of what
is called certified milk, that is milk
which could be guaranteed as strictly
pure. One of the most famous of pro-
ducers of pure milk is H. B. Curriers'
Clover Farm, which supplies abso-
lutely pure milk to the city of Chicago.
AS many of our readers saw and heard
Mr.. Gurler at the dairymen's meeting,
we have thought best to briefly describe
some of his methods of producing milk
which retails at twelve cents per quart
in Chicago. 1t is his purpose to place
upon the market milk as pure as it is
possible for care and human science to
make it.
This care begins with the cows. In
the first place they are all annually
tested with tuberculin. At the first
test four apparently healthy COWS re-
acted and were killed. One of these
was quite generally diseased, though
disease had not progressed very far.
Next, care is taken to give the cows
pure water to drink, and sweet, clean
food to eat. In warm weather they
are pastured on rich and productive
range of seventy acres, upon which
there are pastured $50 animals, though
only eighty-four are MIXED. When
the pasture begins to fail their feed is
increased by the addition of silage, of
which about one bushel (wenty to
twenty-five pounds) only is fed daily.
In the fall. green corn and also a feed