The UK has been just as hung up on cow's milk as the US.

One of my most powerful memories from schooldays (50s and 60s) is having to
drink the regulation third-of-a-pint of free milk in the summer when it was
warm and YUKKY (no fridges) and  just turning sour...that thick yellow
cream on the top breaking up into globules... BULURRRGH!

The kids (maybe one or two per class)  who didn't drink milk had to bring a
note from home. They were given some sort of watery orange juice instead if
memory serves.

Then in the mid-1970s Margaret Thatcher became education minister - and she
(shock horror gasp) stopped the free school milk, first in secondary
schools (that is, 11 year olds and up) .

As a result she was known to banner-waving protesting students as 'Margaret
Thatcher Milk Snatcher'. Yep, I was one of the banner-wavers...well, we
didn't have Vietnam, so we had to make do with milk-robbery when we needed
a cause of our very own.

This milk-snatching move was, I hasten to add, done on purely economic
grounds, as the dairy industry was clearly getting a massive public
subsidy, not because MT felt it was a positive health move.

Since then the concept of subsidised school milk has eroded over the years.
A  few years ago it was still available to pre-school tinies and to kids in
reception and year 1 (that is, the fours and fives) and here at least it
was paid for by local government, not the state. Not sure what happens
nowadays.  Even so, the idea that milk is a wonderful thing is still very
powerful, and although the slogan 'drinka pinta milka day' is no longer
used in advertising,  there is a strong idea that everyone, esp kids,
'ought' to have a pint a day.

Actually, I don't think you could pay kids to drink warm almost sour milk
these days. They would just 'say no'.


Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc Newcastle upon Tyne UK