By Nick Fonda
It was a few weeks ago, over a cup of coffee with a friend, that I learned there are two different types of cow’s milk, A1 and A2.
Milk came up in our conversation because we’re both at an age when aches, pains, and medical appointments seem to inevitably be on the list of world problems regularly discussed as we sip our coffee. My usual complaint is my hip, but, unusually, this time the update was good. My hip had been hurting a little less recently and walking was a little easier. I attributed the difference to having stopped drinking cow’s milk.
My friend is considerably better informed than I am on quite a few things, including, as it turned out, milk.
“You should probably be drinking A2 milk,” he told me.
A2 milk was something I’d never seen in the fridges at the local grocery store. As far as I knew, there were four types of milk: 3.25%, 2%, 1%, and skim.
A few days after our conversation, he dropped off a book with a surprising title: Devil in the Milk: Illness, Health, and the Politics of A1 and A2 Milk. The book was written by Keith Woodford, a Professor of Farm Management and Agribusiness, and was first published in New Zealand in 2007. It came out two years later in the United States.
