Spoiled

Anne Mendelson does more than take on the many myths surrounding milk. She provides a history of milk in Britain and America, as dense and rich as a good cheese, and details the many controversies swirling in the glass, especially those concerning sanitation: clean dairies, pasteurization, refrigeration, and others. Scientifically detailed and rigorous without being difficult or inaccessible, Spoiled is a major contribution to food history and to the history of industrializing agriculture. – E. N. Anderson, author of Everyone Eats: Understanding Food and Culture
The very best food journalism lifts the veil on everyday components of our diet, peeling away accumulated layers of hype, pseudoscience, and ingrained fallacies to reveal the truth. No writer today does this more deftly than Anne Mendelson. Spoiled is the result of scrupulous and unbiased research presented in delightfully readable prose. A masterpiece. – Barry Estabrook, author of Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit
A graceful, gently humorous account of the years of persuasion, breeding, engineering, and politicking required to convince Americans that liquid cow’s milk was nature’s perfect food. You won’t look at those milk bottles in the supermarket in the same way again. – Rachel Laudan, author of Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History
A provocation … that urges readers to question fresh milk’s hegemonic grip over the American mind. – Mayukh Sen * New Yorker *
Persuasively challenges readers to consider forms of dairy that are better for animals, the farmers who care for them and the consumers who drink their milk. * Washington Post *
A sharply written, wide-ranging, and instructive look at the history of dairy milk. – Natalie Angier * New York Review of Books *
Original, compelling, brilliantly written. – Marion Nestle * Food Politics *
[An] absorbing history. * Natural History *

Anne Mendelson is a culinary historian and freelance writer specializing in food-related subjects. Her most recent book is Chow Chop Suey: Food and the Chinese American Journey (Columbia, 2016).

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