From medicine to a staple food - how science and tradition are shaping the milk production and consumption in modern China

Abstract

China, where most people are known to be lactase impersistent, now becomes the second largest dairy market after the US. Contrary to the popular stereotype about traditional Chinese cuisines being dairy free, this lecture will show that the water buffalo cheese and milk products have been part of the food system of Guangdong for centuries, though these indigenous milk products have been gradually replaced by western cow’s milk. This lecture will also challenge the common belief that the surge in cow’s milk consumption in China is a sign indicating westernization of Chinese diet. This lecture will demonstrate the complexity. On one hand, traditional Chinese medical knowledge has been used to design and promote western cow’s milk in China. On the other hand, the culture of milk consumption in China today has been shaped by modern nutrition science, traditional Chinese medical practices, economic reform and China’s modernization project, showing how science, material culture, social and political rules are intricately linked. Milk products, both old and new, provide people of different social classes with new imagination of bodies and capacities, new ways of conducting social interactions, new tactics to fulfill their traditional and modern roles as parents, workers and modern citizens under the context of rapidly globalizing societies, while at the same time create new food safety, environmental and inequality problems.