No Stupid Questions - 71. Why Is Pig Milk the One Milk We Don’t Drink?

Episode Date: October 24, 2021

Also: what’s a food you love that seems disgusting to everyone else?

I didn't know my true self until this very conversation. I'm Angela Duckworth. I'm Stephen Dubner. And you're listening to No Stupid Questions. Today on the show, we have cow milk and goat milk. Why not pig milk? They're smart, skittish, suspicious, and paranoid. That sounds like a good description of a University of Chicago economist.

paranoid. That sounds like a good description of a University of Chicago economist. Also, what's a food that seems gross to most people, but you find delicious? I think a lot of the foods that I like are disgusting to many people. Stephen, we have an email that is about a really interesting question. I'm going to read it to you. Please. Hi, guys. This might imperil your no stupid questions theory, but why don't humans drink pig milk or consume pig milk products?

Is that too stupid a question? The email goes on. Camels, cows, goats, yak, moose, sheep, buffalo, reindeer, wherever a sizable mammal has been domesticated for food, it seems that some group of humans has incorporated its dairy into their diet. Why not pigs? We've got heaps of them. Why is nobody milking them? Curiously yours.

And then I can't tell you the name because the PS says, I would like to remain anonymous for purposes of embarrassment. Dear anonymous, because of potential embarrassment. I don't think that's at all a stupid question. I mean, this may say more about me than about this anonymous listener. I like this question because it's taking something that most people probably have never noticed or thought about. And that's a good way of living life. I really like this kind of curiosity. Why don't we refer to this listener for the rest of this

conversation as perplexed about pigs? Remember how Ann Landers and Dear Abby would have cheating in Kansas or something? So, Dear Perplexed. First of all, we should note that the drinking of animal milk is a relatively recent chapter in the tale of human history. I'm reading here from a BBC piece by one Michael Marshall set against the 300,000-year history of our species, Homo sapiens, that is. Drinking milk is a new habit. Before about 10,000 years ago or so, hardly anybody drank milk, and only then on rare occasions.

The first people to drink milk regularly were early farmers and pastoralists in Western Europe, some of the first humans to live with domesticated animals, including cows. So that suggests that milk was a convenient byproduct of the cows being raised for their meat. By the way, Perplexed talked about reindeer milk. I've not heard of that. Have you? Wait, are reindeer real? I thought they were like Sasquatch. You thought they were only in The Grinch that stole Christmas? Yes, exactly. That is my primary acquaintance with the reindeer. I'm so glad that other people have a reality fantasy confusion. I used to really get confused about dragons and a little bit about unicorns.

Yeah. Because dinosaurs are real. Does not a dragon seem just like a slightly steroidal version of some of the dinosaurs? Yeah, just like a souped up version of a dinosaur. Right. So I think there are reindeers in life, I guess. I don't know. Rudolph. Well, see, there you go. Why would Rudolph have such a realistic name if it were not a real animal?

So anyway, milk consumption is a relatively recent thing. We should also say there are huge variations in what we call dairy consumption around the world. I think Sweden and Iceland are the two places where people drink the most milk per day. Oh, interesting. That somehow doesn't shock me. They just seem like they would be milk drinkers. Now, let me ask you this. Where would you say that the U.S. ranks among the 200 and some countries in the world in

terms of milk consumption? I'd go with 10. I would have gone with that, too. It's 67th in the world. Pretty far down the list. Here are some countries that drink a lot of milk. Costa Rica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Finland, Sri Lanka. But then there are many places where almost no milk is drunk. I was going to go with the Asian countries at the bottom, being that those are my kin.

I think that's true. And there are huge biological differences in our tolerance for lactose once we are no longer babies, when of course many people do drink mother's milk. We are no longer babies when, of course, many people do drink mother's milk. Right. I think the idea is that there's an enzyme, lactase, that breaks down lactose into something digestible. And I think also, to further complicate matters, it's partly your body responding to the fact that you are ingesting lactose that creates the lactase. So if you stop drinking milk, then you can become more lactose intolerant. the lactase. So if you stop drinking milk, then you can become more lactose intolerant. And your lactose intolerance can go up and down even in your own lifetime. Right, right. So how many kinds of, quote, milk are there in your home at any given time and who drinks which of them? We only have cow milk products of various butterfat ratios. So we have half and half for our morning coffee.

And then there's always a half gallon of usually 2% milk or if 2% is sold out, then some other percent milk. So no oat, no almond, no cashew. We have toyed with all of those options except for cashew. But I have to say, I find oat milk horrible. I like soy milk in my lattes. I find that a disturbingly small proportion of cafes actually carry soy milk for some reason. So you and I have different preferences here. I like oat milk. And I find soy and almond milk both undrinkable.

What? I do. What? Sorry. That's going to create a big rift. It's also very hard to milk a soy, I've found. I'm sure it's hard to milk an oat. So when I grew up, we had one cow for a while, but by the time I was maybe 12,

we no longer had a cow, but we would always get our milk locally from another farmer nearby. We would go over there every week or 10 days or so. And we'd use these big industrial size mayonnaise jars, like a gallon mayonnaise jar that the diner or the grocery store would give you. And we'd draw it from the big vat. And it was, I think, even then illegal for the farmers to sell what they call raw milk. Unpasteurized. Yeah, yeah. But we bought it, or maybe it was a barter. Maybe we brought some tomatoes or corn or something for that farmer.

And he put it in the fridge, and then the cream would rise to the top, and mom would skim the cream. That's what she would use to make the ice cream and the butter and the whipped cream. Oh my God, that sounds delicious. And then even when you drank the milk without the cream, it was still so, what's the word? Strong. Did it taste like grass or something? I don't know. But when I went off the farm and drank commercial milk, I thought, wait, this isn't milk. This tastes like a very, very, very pale imitation of milk. So I grew up with

a very strong version of cow milk. And I have to say, when I go somewhere now and they have that straight from the cow milk and I drink it, it is overwhelmingly strong. So I think that our tastes adjust. Is it legal to drink it anywhere now, like unpasteurized? I think it may be legal to drink it, but not to sell it or to buy it. Like marijuana or something. No, I think marijuana is a lot more legal than raw milk. Now, getting back to Perplexed's point, it is true that people in various countries drink the milk of the camel, the yak, the water buffalo. I'm reading here from a Slate article by Benjamin Phelan. The reindeer, there it is. The elk, the horse, some people drink fermented horse milk, and a few other animals. All of these animals, except for the horse, those are all ruminants,

which I don't know exactly what a ruminant is. They ruminate a lot. They're very emotionally perplexing. Kind of melancholy. But they have these four-chambered stomachs. They produce a lot of milk. But anyway, different animals' milks have different properties. You talk to anyone who makes cheese or even eats cheese, you know that there's some people who favor the sheep milk and some of the goat milk and some of the cow milk. Cow milk is apparently quite similar to human milk, so the taste is familiar. So after all that preamble,

I think Perplexed is right to ask, why not pig's milk? Do you know how many pigs there are in the world, Angela? Wait, this is like a McKinsey question. When I was in an interview for McKinsey, it was like, how many tennis balls are manufactured every year? And you had to show your analytic skills. So can I try this? Yeah, I'd love it. How many pigs are there in the world? At any given time, considering that some of them have just become bacon. Let's assume that the bacon on the shelf doesn't count as a pig.

I'm going to guess, because pigs are primarily domesticated animals, that we can start with the fact that there are, what, roughly 7 billion people? Yeah. So then I would say, how many pigs are there per person? And without going through too much math about how much the average person consumes a pig. I'm just going to go with one to one. So I'm going to guess there are 7 billion pigs. Wow. I loved your reckoning. You're off by almost exactly an order of magnitude.

Whoa. Yeah. Wait, I don't even know which way. Well, look at it this way. How many people could one pig feed? Oh, a lot. Pigs are big. Yeah, that's true.

Wait, so are there 700 million pigs? I'm seeing a number here for 670 million pigs at any given time. But still, that's a lot of pigs. And presumably a significant share of these pigs are female. That's potentially a lot of pig milk. So why is there no pig milk cheese? Well, the same Benjamin Phelan who wrote the article in Slate that I mentioned, he was curious about this, as was our perplexed.

And he tracked down a chef who's trying to make pig cheese. His name was Edward Lee. And here's what Edward Lee says. Anyone who farms pigs would say that pig's milk would make an incredible cheese. The problem is that it's nearly impossible to milk pigs. When sows are lactating, they get very aggressive. They're not docile like cows. They're smart, skittish, suspicious, and paranoid.

They do not like you getting up in their business. That sounds like a good description of a University of Chicago economist. Skittish, suspicious, paranoid, and they don't like you getting up in their business. And smart. And smart, right. Now, there's a pig farmer who once told the New York food writer, Robert Sietsema, this was published in the Village Voice, that pig milk is a little more watery than most milk and that it's gamey. I will say in the Netherlands, there is a family farm called Piggy's Palace, and they produced a block of cheese made from pig's milk. This was in 2015. And someone paid, it says you're $2,300 a kilogram at an auction. So that's really expensive cheese. The money was being donated to a children's cancer charity. And the cheese itself, when eaten, was described as chalky and

a bit salty. So you definitely overpaid. For a good cause, though. I guess the other answer to perplexed would be, do we really need another animal product if you can get a close facsimile from all the plant-based milk replacements. I think the pigs would lobby against us branching out into pig milk. One could argue from an environmental perspective that some of these plant-based milks are better for the environment. So there are a lot of compelling arguments against pig milk. But, you know, I think it's worth thinking about other non-bacon uses of pig, including medical uses. Pigs have been used for things like skin grafts for humans. And I know there was talk a while

back of pig organs being used for transplantation, things like kidneys where we need a lot more. I believe pig heart valves have been used. And I know that there was one fairly narrow thread of the pig heart valve argument, which was, would a heart valve from a pig be considered kosher, acceptable for an Orthodox Jewish or a Muslim patient? Because the consumption of pig is forbidden. What was the resolution of that? because the consumption of pig is forbidden. What was the resolution of that? So you might think that Jews or others might be prohibited from getting what are called xenotransplants because of biblical prohibition against pigs.

But within Judaism, this would fall under what's called pikuach nefesh, which is the notion of saving a life. which is the notion of saving a life. And Jewish law says that you can basically do anything except maybe kill another person if you're going to save a life. That's how strong the notion of saving a life is. And so that means that even if the use of pig parts is not kosher or legal, according to Jewish law, that when someone's life is at stake, you are actually not only not forbidden, but commanded to do what's necessary to save them. So that's a nice thing to know. That's exactly what Barry Schwartz, psychologist, also philosopher, would say about this very question. Is it okay to lie? Is it okay to break kosher law?

It depends. And it depends on whether there's a higher virtue that you're trying to pursue. Do you ever watch the show Grey's Anatomy? I never watched the show Grey's Anatomy. Is it still on? I have no idea. I've heard of it. I never saw it either.

But I do know that there was a storyline with a plot like this, which was an Orthodox Jewish girl needed to have a transplant from a pig part. And the show presented the facts as if that could not happen because she was Jewish. And when the episode aired, I believe there was a lot of pushback from the Orthodox Jewish community saying, no, no, no, this is wrong, this is silly and this is stupid in that the halacha, the Jewish law actually says, if it's in service of saving someone's life, then you can use all the pig you need to. I hope the Orthodox community got that word out, like seriously, because they wouldn't want people to believe that and then not go and get medical

care when they needed to. Right. So did anything we've talked about make you more curious to have some pig milk? I would definitely drink pig milk if it were offered. I wouldn't buy it at an auction. So I would say to perplexed, it seems that there are a lot of good reasons to not drink pig milk, but I do think it's such a good instinct that perplexed exercise to constantly ask ourselves why we don't do the things we don't do and why we do the things we do. Because, you know, that's progress. Progress may not include a massive change in our pig milk consumption, but it will include other things that are nearly unthinkable or at least unthought of by the vast majority of people. And that instinct, dear perplexed, I believe is worth saluting. So I salute you.

Yeah. Perplexed asked a very unstupid question. And from that Sal's ear, I think we made a purse. Still to come on No Stupid Questions, Stephen and Angela share their experiences eating insects, intestines, and several other atypical delicacies. I could not stop eating those delicious candied crickets. So Angela, I have a brief follow-up question for you from our earlier pig milk conversation, which I enjoyed thoroughly. So here's the question. What, Angela, would you say is a food that seems gross or disgusting to most people, but you think we should all try? Such an interesting question. Let me try to answer directly, but then I have a meta answer.

You can give the meta first if you want. I sense an instinct to do so. Okay. Look, there's a category of food that is disgusting probably for evolutionary reasons, like they have toxins and therefore we all think it's disgusting. Or like that cheese with maggots in it that some people love. Is there a cheese with maggots in it? Yeah, at least one. No, live maggots or dead maggots? I don't know if they're live.

Hey, guess what? They're both gross. I don't even know why I asked that question. I don't want to eat cheese with maggots in it. I think there are some things that we have like a visceral reaction to, like nobody wanted to eat vomit. My dog might have. dog. But then there's food like natto, you know, the Japanese fermented soybean thing. It's really stringy and it does look like maggots, by the way. I tried it and I was like, this is truly awful. Oh, so that's not your recommendation for the gross food that people should try? I'm thinking of all the ones where it's just a limitation of my open-mindedness. Durian fruit, I also haven't even mustered the courage to try,

despite this being part of my cultural heritage. But durian, we should say, the smell and the taste are really different. Which is so perplexing because durian is supposed to taste like the most beautiful, fragrant, lovely fruit in the world, and it's smelling like poo, right? Kind of garbage poo, garbage puke poo. But aren't smell and taste so intertwined? How is that possible? Well, have you ever drunk vanilla extract from the bottle?

Oh, it's really bitter and terrible. But that I can kind of understand because it's the bitter note that makes the sweet things like chocolate chip cookies taste better. But anyway, I'm just wondering if there's a good answer to that question. I don't have strong views of something that I personally like. There's nothing that you love to eat that you think many other people would judge as disgusting. I eat eel, but that's on most sushi platters. It's usually in that tasty little sweet sauce and it's broiled. The sauce is what you're after. I know the eel is just a fatty vehicle for the teriyaki sauce or whatever it is that goes on top.

But I can't think of anything that I eat that most people think is disgusting. What's your answer to that? I think a lot of the foods that I like are disgusting to many people. Like what? I love chopped liver. I love chopped herring. I guess I eat a lot of foods that are so gross that they can only be eaten if chopped up, essentially.

Gefiltefish, also chopped. These are all the foods of your Jewish heritage. It's the standard Ashkenazic menu. My dad used to love tongue. I did not inherit that taste. Just to give the background, my parents were both Jewish, but before they met each other, they'd both converted to Catholicism, which is unusual. Very statistically unlikely. Two needles in a big haystack finding each other. But anyway, my family became very Catholic until many years later, I returned and became Jewish. But my dad shed most of his Jewish background, except for a few things, and some of those were food. So in the pantry in our farmhouse in upstate New York, where we were very, very Catholic, he would keep a jar of that really thickly jellied

Manischewitz gefilte fish, which is, I would say, maybe the world's worst gefilte fish. It is. That's the only gefilte fish I've had, Stephen. Well, okay, this is what we in our family call the gefilte tragedy because good gefilte fish is wonderful, but it's got to be made by loving hands and not by a machine that's then put in a jar with sweet jelly. I like that gefilte fish. Oh, okay. Power to you.

I was like the only one at the bar mitzvah celebration that would be eating the gefilte fish. I'd be like, this is great. It's like a little fish dumpling. Okay. So I think you just came up with your answer, which is- Manischewitz gefilte fish. That kind of gefilte fish does seem disgusting to a lot of people, but not to you.

I didn't know my true self until this very conversation. Sure. I'll go on record saying that everybody in the world should have an opener mind about gefilte fish in general and Manischewitz gefilte fish for you gefilte fish snobs. But let me say this, of all these chopped fishy Ashkenazic foods I do like, I'm not going to say that everyone should try all those. This is not like the Kantian imperative that you would will it for all. Exactly. The Kantian imperative for me, for a potentially disgusting food would be anchovy

paste. That is such a good answer. Yes. The kind that comes out of this little tube and you put it in and everything tastes better. Amazing. It's umami in a little toothpaste style tube. Actually, the best kind of umami there is. And again, I guess it is very consistent with my earlier choices that it is chopped up fish. In this case, little anchovies.

Do you think people think this is gross, though? That was the part I was struggling with. Maybe here's the gross part. When I open the tube of anchovy paste to cook with it, which I do very often because I use it in a lot of things, I will sometimes suck a little straight out of the tube because I love it. That is disgusting. Okay, well, if you want to be that specific, then yeah, I don't think most people would do that.

Let's get people started where they need to be started, Stephen. I think they should put it in their salad dressing. Okay, nice. And maybe if you're making a pasta sauce, and then you can mainline it like you do. Now, Angela, our producer and fact checker and friend Rebecca, I believe, reached out to listeners to ask them their advice on discussing foods that people should try. Rebecca, is that right? Are you there on the line? Yes, I did.

Hi, guys. I'm joining you now. I want to know what other people thought. They probably had better answers than I did. So we reached out to listeners on Twitter and we had a lot of different types of responses. Awful was a common response. You know, the internal organs of an animal. Oh, awful. O-F-F-A-L. Awful is awful. Yeah. At PepeMac27 said turkey testicles,

chicken hearts, chinchulines, which are intestines, and at R underscore seton said brain. I'm not a fan of any of those. Angela, are you a fan of any of those brain intestine testicles? Have you ever had intestine? It tastes like rubber bands. You chew and chew and chew and nothing seems to be getting chewed. I will say I have tried a lot of allegedly disgusting things just because I'm curious, including in Boston's Chinatown. I once had a big bowl full of duck tongue. Oh my goodness. They're not that good.

I've had that too. They're like really thin as you imagine they are to fit in the beak. I'm not going to do that again, I hate to say. Now, Rebecca, I'm curious, did anyone mention insects as a disgusting food that they like? Yeah, we had somebody who mentioned grasshoppers, which I know you've had in the past, Stephen. Is that correct? They are delicious and crickets if prepared well. Angela, how do you feel about that?

I went on vacation to Japan with Jason. And on the set meal, you know, it's one of those places where the chef just makes whatever they're going to make. And there was a little bowl of candied crickets. And I could not, I could not. Oh, I thought you were going to say, I could not stop eating those delicious candied crickets and I could not I could not oh I thought you're gonna say I could not stop eating those delicious candied crickets no and then Jason ate them and I think I made him eat mine too because I don't want to be rude and then he chased me on around the room trying to kiss me it was very juvenile well this listener says that they go very well with tortillas and salsa and melted cheese you know what that just tells you that like everything goes well with a, you know, melt some cheese on it. Like, sure. I do have to share that there's this one

listener, T Selby, said that she had cooked tarantula in Cambodia and it wasn't too shabby. I don't know if that counts as an insect, though. I think it's an arachnid, probably. It's got two extra legs. But if you like the legs, that's even better. All right. So, Angela, in the spirit of this question about foods that seem gross to most people, but we should try, I want to take you to the same restaurant in New York where I took your colleague, Paul Rosen, who writes about disgust, to a Mexican restaurant in the East Village that serves a lot of different insects prepared in many different ways, ants, crickets, grasshoppers.

And you will so love them, I promise you, that you will just start walking around in your daily life looking for insects to grab and cook. Well, look, I have had many meals with Paul Rosen, and I have had many conversations with Paul Rosen about the eating of insects. And none of this convinces me that we should go out to eat and eat insects together. The subtext of what you just said is, if I didn't eat insects with Paul Rosin, why would I eat insects with you? That's what you're saying. That was exactly it.

Okay. Thanks, friend. You're welcome. No Stupid Questions is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which also includes Freakonomics Radio, People I Mostly Admire, and Freakonomics MD. This episode was produced by me, Rebecca Lee Douglas. And now here's a fact check of today's conversations.

In the first half of the episode, Angela doubts whether reindeer are real. Reindeer, also known as caribou, are in fact real animals. They can be found in the Arctic tundra, as well as the forests of Greenland, Scandinavia, Russia, Alaska, and Canada. Later, Stevens says that there are 200 and some countries in the world. However, the United States officially recognizes just 195 countries, the 193 members of the United Nations, plus the Holy See and the Republic of Kosovo. Places like Taiwan and Palestine are recognized by other countries, but not by the UN or the US. Stephen also wonders about the definition of a ruminant. While someone who ruminates tends to spend a lot of time thinking deeply or worrying about something,

a ruminant is an animal with a four-chambered stomach and two-toed feet. Next, Steven and Angela wonder if the popular television show Grey's Anatomy is still on the air. In May 2021, fans of the series were thrilled to learn that the show was renewed for an 18th season, which may seem like a long time, but the run pales in comparison to shows like General Hospital, which has been on for 58 years, and Coronation Street, which has been on for 61 years. Also, Stevens says that marijuana is more legal than raw milk. It's actually sort of comparable. Currently, recreational use of marijuana is fully legal in 18 states and decriminalized in 12 others. The retail sale of raw milk is legal in 13 states, and limited legal sale is available in 17 others.

Finally, Stephen and Angela wonder whether casu marzu, a maggot-infested cheese, is served with the insects alive or dead. The Sardinian delicacy is made when cheese skipper flies lay their eggs in cracks that form in the cheese. The maggots hatch and digest the product, turning it soft and creamy. Certain locals choose to eat the cheese with the live maggots. Other mongers spin it in a centrifuge to merge the maggots and the cheese together. The product is currently banned from commercial use, even though Sardinians have been enjoying it for centuries. That's it for the Fact Check. No Stupid Questions is produced by Freakonomics Radio and Stitcher.

Our staff includes Allison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, Eleanor Osborne, Joel Meyer, Trisha Boveda, Emma Terrell, Lear Bowditch, and Jacob Clemente. Our theme song is And She Was by Talking Heads. Special thanks to David Byrne and Warner Chapel Music. If you'd like to listen to the show ad-free, subscribe to Stitcher Premium. You can also follow us on Twitter at NSQ underscore show and on Facebook at NSQ show. If you have a question for a future episode, please email it to NSQ at Freakonomics.com. And if you heard Stephen or Angela reference a study, an expert, or a book that you'd like to learn more about, you can check out Freakonomics.com slash NSQ, where we link to all of the major references

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