Oh What A Time... - #87 Milk (Part 2)

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed!Oh What A Time! is back for 2025 and this week we’ve got an episode we’ve been promising (and threatening) for a while: milk! Whatever happened to milk bars? What’s the history behind milk alternatives? Plus, we’ve also got lots on the humble milk float.And all this chat of milk bars got us thinking: has there been a greater loss to the high street than Wimpy? (And after a quick google, a new question: who even knew Wimpy is thriving?!). If you’ve got anything to add, you can email: [e-mail] you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER?Up for grabs is:- two bonus episodes every month!- ad-free listening- episodes a week ahead of everyone else- And much moreSubscriptions are available via AnotherSlice and Wondery +. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.comYou can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom xSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wanderi Plus subscribers can listen to episodes of Oh What A Time early and ad free. Join Wanderi Plus in the Wanderi app or on Apple podcasts. Hello and welcome to part two of Milk. Let's get on with the show. OK, let's talk about the history of milk alternatives. Of course, we live in an age now. We can get several different variants. Care to name a few? Alternative to milk? Yeah.

Oat. Oat, correct. Almond. Correct. Soya. Correct. Goats. Yeah.

Yeah, that's good. Water. Coconut milk is the other one I can think of. Oh, that's a nice one. That's good. So alternatives to milk. I think of them as a 21st century invention, but actually they're not at all. If we go back to Dr. Samuel Johnson, he was writing his dictionary in the middle of the 18th century and he wrote that milk can mean two things. It can mean a liquor with which animals feed their young or an emulsion made by the contusion of seeds. This is in the

middle of the 18th century. Johnson named almond milk as his example. It made it mind blowing, isn't it? I had no idea that they were doing it then. Yeah. And in fact, almond milk was first mentioned in English in, get this, the 1390s. Wow. That surprises me. That really surprises me. I'm actually, I'm amazed and don't believe it, but I'll allow the historians, the real historians, so I must believe it. Wow. So he first mentioned the 1390s. 1390s?

And then followed by the sentence, what the hell are you talking about, Steve? Steve. Almonds don't have nipples. Do you know what? You used Steve then. There were no Steves in the 1390s. When did Steve come about? No. No. I mean, when you read Chaucer, the name's knocking about. Javorson and all this like what? What are these names? No one's ever called Danny. When do we think the earliest Steve was? Nobody, don't say anything. Just think for five seconds.

Yeah. Okay. I've got one. Yeah, I think I've got the time. Okay. Yeah. Snooker World Final versus Dennis Taylor. That was the first time I heard the name Steve. I think about 1935 would have been the first Steve. What about you, Al? You're listening to When Was the First Steve? Is there a Steve in the Bible? Well, are we having St Stephen? Things like that, you know? Well, I mean, there were Stevens. On the Feast of Stephen! Oh, that was, but that's different. But it's not on the Feast of Steve.

Did anyone call St Stephen Steve? Yeah. That's what we need to know. On the Feast of Steve. It used to go on Christmas Steve, you know that? That wasn't like, Christmas Steve. Like, before Christmas you're getting so excited, Steve would come down your chimney. Question for the listeners, when was the first Steve?

Yeah, so 1390s you had almond milk. However, there's a series of drawbacks to trying to get hold of almond milk in 1390s. Firstly, it's really expensive to produce and therefore it's really expensive to purchase because almonds had to be imported into Britain from the Mediterranean, which was added to the cost. So although Oman milk was around in the 1390s in England, it was quite difficult to come by. In Asia, where there was more widespread lactose intolerance, this led to a greater variety of non-dairy alternatives. Soya milk, for instance. Soya milk, when did you think that was around? When did you think that first emerged, guys? Soya milk?ya milk. Jason Vale A thousand years ago. Will Barron Well, had I not been party to what you were saying about almond milk, I would have

probably guessed 1985, maybe some of that. But it's obviously much earlier than that. So I'll go from 500 years ago. Jason Vale The first century BC. Will Barron Whoa! Jason Vale That's when soya milk first started emerging in the Chinese diet. Incredible. They called it douzhang, which as the name suggests is a literal translation of a broth made from soy beans.

And they had a tofu variant as well, doufuzhang, which was in existence by the 14th century BC. Will Barron If the Chinese were drinking soy milk in the first century BC, that has to alter my guess around the first Steve. That's made me recalibrate Steve's. I don't know if they're related. Will Barron There's a butterfly effect in practice now. Will Barron Yeah, yeah. Will Barron Okay. I have Googled that briefly,

by the way. It says the name Steven, which Steve is short for, has been documented in historical records as early as the eighth century. So they- Will Barron Yeah, but they're never Steve's. Will Barron No, it does say Steven, which Steve is short for has been documented in historical records as early as the 8th century. Yeah, but they're never Steve's. No, it does say Stephen, which Steve is short for, which is not the first thing. Anyway, back to you Chris, sorry. In the 18th century, this soya milk broth, doujian, was being sold as street food. And then over time, by the 1920s, you could buy a bottle doujian from shops. This transitioned into milk, effectively. In the Second World

War milk was sold across East Asia as a soft drink. In Europe, soya bean milk was seen as a product of scientific ingenuity. In 1913 it was announced that three German scientists had come up with a process to create this new synthetic milk. And there were lots of skeptics in Britain. I, in fact, talking to you right now, I'm a skeptic of soya milk. There were lots of skeptics in Britain. I, in fact, talking to you right now, I'm a skeptic of soya milk. That is the one milk I really have an issue with. In fact, in 1931, one newspaper columnist wrote, a friend who has had an opportunity of tasting it tells me that he does not think anyone would be deceived. That is, in essence, my issue with soya milk. I actually accidentally once drank neat soy milk and man, I nearly retched.

I think the problem with milk alternatives is that you have to accept it as a different thing. Yes. That your drink is going to taste differently and you've got to look for a nice new taste as opposed to something that's going to replicate milk. Because if it's going to replicate milk, you will always be disappointed because it will never taste as good as milk. Yeah.

But if you can make coconut milk nice or almond milk nice or soy milk nice in a different way, then that is when, especially if you're lactose intolerant, that's where you're going to have your fun rather than constantly disappointing yourself. What a lovely new perspective on milk. Thank you. I don't, I very rarely offer a fresh perspective, but that is one. So these alternatives to dairy that I've mentioned so far are of course all from plants, but

let's not forget there are milk alternatives that come from animals. So a couple are goat and sheep's milk. Sheep's milk having been used long before humans began drinking cow's milk in vast quantities. Oh really? I remember I was on a scout trip. I reckon I was nine years old and I accidentally put goat's milk on my cornflakes. At that point in my life, I had never heard of goat's milk. So I said, what has happened? This milk is off. The scout master explained to me, I had never heard of goat's milk. And so I said, what has happened?

This milk is off. And so, and the scout master explained to me, no, I was drinking goat's milk and I had never heard of this. I thought it sounded insane that someone would milk a goat and that you could go buy this. And even now, same thing now, it sounds insane to me. Is it healthier for you goat's milk? I'm not sure. In the Icelandic sagas, there are several mentions of milking sheep and of making a

product of naturally fermented cheese and skia. Skia is an unstrained drink, but can be strained closer to what we might buy today, like a kind of yoghurt-y drink. Have you ever had skia? No. I'm not aware of it. No. One rather unusual use of skia comes in the Grettis Saga, again an Icelandic saga, and a tale featuring the outlaw Greta as Mundarsen. At the start of a big fight,

Greta is covered in skier by his opponent and caused therefore to suffer a great shame. Like, it's embarrassing to have been covered in this skier. And so the pair, Greta and Aoun, wrestle each other to the ground, are increasingly covered in yoghurt sludge. Sounds a little bit like the plot of Home Alone in the Tar, Joe Pesci. Yeah, it's a humiliation to have been covered in this skier in the Icelandic Skarga. Elsewhere, Sheep's Milk has been used in the manufacture of different cheeses. Rotfool in France, Feta in Greece, Pecorino in Italy and the original form of Wensleydale was sheep's milk. I did not know that.

Wensleydale now made with cow's milk and that was one of the accidental results of the dissolution of the monasteries by Thomas Cromwell. Cheese production shifted to farms where dairy herds were more prevalent and profitable. Really? That's why Wensley Dow was making cow's milk and not sheep's milk. That's really interesting. But if we were to think about the grandfather of milk alternatives, we have to look to the humble coconut, which has been the source of coconut milk for thousands of years, particularly

on the islands of the Pacific and Madagascar. I always thought- Well, I think coconuts have been the source of coconut milk since the beginning of coconuts. I don't think there was a previous source of coconut milk. Very good point. People realise, oh, blow me down, you can find it in coconuts. I always thought coconut milk was the liquid at the centre of a coconut. But actually, is that what you would have thought? You would have thought that, Crane. I would have assumed that. I thought that's what it was. Yeah. Is it not?

It's produced by grating coconut and mixing it with hot water. Ah. And I'm a coconut milk drinker. I really like coconut milk. Yeah, I really like it. I eat bounty bars. I had some yesterday. Oh, nice. We should go for a drink. We get on. So coconut milk actually spread to the Indian subcontinent and to the Asian mainland where it was established both as a drink and as an ingredient in cooking. By the Renaissance, coconuts had arrived in Europe too and coconut milk found its way into European diets.

Vegetarians in the 19th and early 20th centuries advocated the use of coconut milk as a means for producing non-dairy butter and as a general substitute in most recipes which called for dairy cow's milk. Properly made, encouraged one advocate in 1927, the vegetarian's butter is as nourishing as animal butter and it is cheaper. There you go. Three years later in 1930s as if to prove a point about the potency of alternatives, a group of missionaries gathered in Grangemouth in Scotland

to launch their new boat, the John Williams. Instead of the traditional bottle of champagne, they smashed instead a bottle of coconut milk on the side. Ah, coconut milk. Yeah, there you go. So milk alternatives, a long, long history. A far longer history than I'd anticipated, actually, I must admit. Shall we all just finish this? My name, your favourite of the milk alternatives?

I'm going coconut. Coconut is my favourite of the non-dairy milks. I love coconut milk. I'm going to go almond. But the problem with it in a cup of tea is, it turns the whole tea almond based. Yes. Yeah. I'm going to say Coca Cola. With a dash of milk. That's how you have it. Okay, so to finish today's show on the subject of milk, I am going to talk to you lovely,

lovely, lovely, lovely boys about the history of the milk round and more crucially, I suppose, the milk bottle. Just to start with a little bit of context for this, one of Britain's really proud claims in the 1960s was that we had more electric vehicles on the road than any other country in the world. So this is one of the big proud claims that Britain used to port, which does sound very impressive and very forward thinking until closer inspection of this claim reveals that in fact, most of those vehicles were milk floats. So, it's this bold, exciting claim as sort of, you know, this is what the future's like.

But actually, the vast majority of these vehicles were milk floats. For overseas listeners, milk floats here, they're kind of really wide vehicles, they're impossibly slow, they're open-sided, and they carry the milk from doorstep to doorstep, or they used to at least, all across the country. Do you remember the milkman coming? Do you have a nostalgic feeling towards that? Absolutely. Let me shock you.

I still have my milk delivered by a milkman who goes around on a milk float. On a proper, what I was calling 1980s milk float. On a 1980s milk float and I live in East London. Our milkman is called Steve and he turns on the Christmas lights. He's a big celebrity locally. And so I'm still living that 1980s milkman experience. Well, Chris, when he next turns up, ask him, you know we've got to ask him, when was the first Steve?

Anyone's going to know it's someone by the name of Steve. He might have access to that information. Maybe he's a Highlander. He's been doing these rounds since the 1920s. access to that information. Toby would be on his rounds at sort of 6am. Because you would wake up, we used to have our milk delivered when I was a kid, and he'd wake up at you know, seven o'clock and he'd already been. Will Barron Yes. Will Barron And also they used to deliver things like yogurt and there was also, I think this was quite a working class area thing, you'd have like the lemonade man would deliver lemonade. My dad's best friend did it.

Will Barron You could get orange juice and stuff like that, all in the milk bottle. Yeah. Will Barron He was the lemonade guy. Is there that much point for a silent truck if, I don't know if this was definitely my experience, where they actually put the milk bottles down on your doorstep, it was the loudest noise anyone had ever made. Because they're all blanking together like they're an instrument. And also based on some of the pornography I watched as a younger man, he might have

an electric milk float which is very noisy, but he will have loud sex in every house he'd live his milk to. I mean, it's sort of, you know, the Lord giveth with one hand and taketh with the other. Will Barron Absolutely. It's all about balance. So, likewise, Chris, we until maybe a couple of years ago, or maybe even a year ago, did use, there was a milkman around here and we did use him. But our problem is that we could never order the correct amount of milk. Either had not enough milk, we always got it completely wrong, or most of the time we'd end up with far too much milk. Because we wouldn't finish yesterday's milk and the next day more milk could arrive. And it would keep arriving. So you're having friends over

and you're constantly offering cups of tea, you're having milk on everything and it's trying to stop this tide of milk that was constantly coming to the house. So we've returned now to actually going to the shop and buying the milk when we need the milk. We have some semblance of control over it. How disappointing. There's also an interesting little thing in terms of the milk truck. I'm sure it'll still be the case with yours, Chris. They've stuck with the traditional colours for milk. So the tops of a bottle here, it's red for whole milk, if you get it from a milk truck, and blue for skimmed, which is the

opposite of what you get in the shops nowadays. That's what it was with our local one. I hate to break this to you, semi-skimmed is red top around here and whole milk is silver top. And then you actually get a gold top, which is the absolute cream of the whole milk, but the very cream. Yeah. And when you took the silver off, there would be like a sort of quarter of an inch of cream at the top. That's exactly what happens.

Yeah. There's a gold one that we got once, which is just mad. It's like all that cream. The very, very top. I don't even know what it is. Oh, is that what it is? It's ultra fatty milk. Ultra fatty, yeah.

Wow. What's that for? God knows. Super strong bones. Body builders. I don't know, but you should put in a word for your custard shop. I think it could be the stuff you're after. So the milk float's still knocking around in some places, but really it's basically

disappeared. The original milk floats, however, they were not electric. The original milk floats, way back, were horse drawn and they delivered milk from the middle of the 19th century until well into the 20th century. That's when the horse-drawn milk float was around. At first, the milk, this is fascinating, was carried around in large churns on the back of the horse-drawn carriage, taken direct from the farm to people's homes and then was poured out by the milkman at the customer's house into jugs and other containers. So they'd

have this huge thing of milk in the back and they would pour out what you require. Which I can't help but imagine coming out with your cereal in the morning. Get an empty bowl and go, just fill that up. Just wet the wheat a bit so that'll be fine. Will Barron And also, when you're pouring from a big churn, it would just go everywhere. So it'd be on your bowl, it'd be on your hands, it's on your suit. You're covered in milk on the way to work. Oh, fuck's sake, it's on your bow, it'll be on your hands, it's on your suit, you're covered in milk on the way to work, you'll have fuck sex on your dressing gown. Genuinely though, El, the stress of por- because these churns were huge, these things, they would contain, they'd have massive amount of milk that they would then tip and give you what you needed. The stress of that job. But I hate to bring it

back to 1970s pornography, it is a sexy job. It is a sexy job. I get it, I'm beginning to understand. a sexy job. I get it. I'm beginning to understand. Well, you say it was sexy, Al, but there was a big issue with this mode of passing milk around, of giving milk to the public. Would you like to guess what the issue was with this approach? E. coli. Yes, it was. Sharing from house to house ran the risk of spreading contaminants from one place to the next. It was just not a cleanly way to do it. So a call was put out for a more sanitary alternative. And in

the late 1870s and early 1880s, several American inventors received patents for glass milk bottles. That's when it came about, 1870s onward. The first patent was granted to George Henry Lester in 1878. second granted to a guy called Henry Thatcher, which is the name which will become important, the name Thatcher, later we'll find out, in 1884. And the following year, Thatcher's Milk Protector went into production and by the end of the decade, the milk bottle and its various design was the principal means by which milk was delivered to consumers across America.

And then soon this glass bottle technology was present in the UK too, with the London based company called Express Dairy Company pioneering their use as well. This company specialised in bringing milk into the capital from the countryside by express train. And the technology then spread out across the UK so that by 1975, more than 90% of milk in Britain was delivered to homes in glass bottles. Isn't that crazy? 90% of milk in Britain came in that way from the milkman. And in the 1990s, it all changed. Why did it all change? What was the death now? Supermarkets. Yes. Look at you. Two for two. Your app says it's home run after home run. I'm a milk guy.

People like Ukraine just can never manage how much milk they actually need. Yeah. Exactly. This is where the supermarkets came in for the likes of me. Supermarkets, they muscled in to the dairy market. They supplied the traditional milk delivery mechanisms and replaced the glass bottles with the plastic ones we get today. Which means today the milk bottle, the glass one at least, and the milkman is basically, as you're saying, Al, it's a nostalgic thing for a lot of people. In fact, home deliveries by a milkman now account for only three or four

percent of the total market share. I remember the discussions my parents had about whether that we should switch to supermarkets because it was much cheaper than the milkman. Will Barron And did they? Jason Vale They did. They felt really guilty about it. Will Barron Yeah. Well, look at that drop. Jason Vale But everyone was doing it and everyone was doing it at the same time as well. Will Barron So 1975, 90% of all milk was by Milk Float. Now, 3 or 4% of the total market share. Jason Vale Delighted to be in that 3 or 4%. Supporting local businesses. You hand your milk money over to Tesco's, feel free.

Will Barron Support local shuggers. If the milk floats a rockin', don't come a-knockin'. Actually, you don't need to knock because it's open-sided, we can see everything. In fact though, for older people, people older than us, actually the act of drinking milk itself is weirdly nostalgic, especially due to its sort of link to schooling and childhood. So in Britain, during the interwar years, a milk and school scheme was launched nationally. This became a permanent fixture via the Free Milk Act of 1946.

Now, this legislation was a brainchild of Education Minister Ellen Wilkinson, which meant that all school children in Britain under the age of 18 would be given a third of a pint of milk for free every day they were in school. Now, why do you think that was brought in? Can I go for the hat-trick here? Why was that brought in? And you did touch upon it earlier. Will Barron It was because Britain's working-class population were unhealthy. Well, that, and that's unfair, they were, because of deprivation,

they'd been getting things like rickets in the 1920s and a Labour government thought well we can sort that out because if the state provides milk for children, then it means that poor children will have enough calcium in their diet so that they grow healthy bones. Well, that is partly correct. The actual reason was it's basically based on a belief that malnutrition was linked to poor educational attainment. So the idea that if you were hungry or you were ill or you weren't healthy, whatever it happens to be, that it was very hard for you, understandably, to concentrate to work whatever was required in school. So this was basically an attempt of improving school standards and outcome. That was the crucial reason they brought it into school.

Want, idleness and squalor. What's that, sorry? Want, idleness and squalor. They were the sort of things that the Labour Party were going to try and sort out after the war. Indeed. However, for a final point, who was it who got rid of milk from secondary schools? Margaret Thatcher as Education Secretary. Ah, ah! You were doing so well. Oh, really?

In fact, it was 1968. The Labour government under Howard Wilson got rid of free milk in secondary schools. Edward Short, the then minister... But not in primary schools. No, but they started it. Edward Short, the then minister, somehow escaped the nickname that followed his conservative successor, Margaret Thatcher. You are right though, Thatcher did then step it up a bit in 1971 by removing milk from primary age children over seven

and was denounced by critics as the milk snatcher. It's quite interesting, isn't it? It's seen entirely as this Thatcherite policy when actually there was also a lot taken away from secondary schools entirely by the Labour government in 68. I'm almost seven years older than my little sister and she had milk at school and I didn't. Oh really? And she is an incredibly healthy, sporty individual and I am a fucking mess. She is a nurse who works long hours with no ill effect. I am a podcaster who could do two podcasts a day before I have to go to bed.

Just lie down on the floor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look at those thin forearms and wrists. Thank you, Maggie. Thank you, Margaret. Really appreciate it, mate. 1971, Thatcher the Milk Snatcher. She removes milk for primary school kids over seven. The reason being she was tasked with finding millions of pounds of savings in her department, discovered that more was being spent on free milk than school textbooks. So free milk was then further curtailed in 1980 with Thatcher now Prime Minister, with it now being given only to the under five.

So she's really going for it now. I was born in 1980. Nice one. Yeah. Nice one. minister, with it now being given only to the under five. So she's really going for it now. I was born in 1980. Nice one. Yeah. Nice one. Why do you think I've got such a deformed spine? What do you think you'd look like now had you got free milk at school? Have you seen the statue of David? Yeah.

Big time. Yeah. Also, that statue is the same colour as milk. Not a coincidence. Well Al, had you been living in Merthyr Tydfil, you may still have got a little bit of milk in school. Because that area discovered a brilliant loophole to try and prevent what Thatcher was doing. Now, I'm going to end on this. What do you think this loophole was? Do you know about this, Al? What did they do? No, I didn't live in Merthyr.

This is incredible. This is amazing., Al? And what did they do? No, I didn't live in Mutham. This is incredible. This is amazing. What were they doing? Take a guess. What loophole do you think they discovered to mean that they could still give milk to kids at school? It's so funny.

I've got no idea. Misclassify the ages of... No. So they poured over details of the legislation and found that flavored milk was apparently still out. Or rather, that its delivery had not been conceived by the government and so was not mentioned. The result being that children of Merthyr Tybal were given strawberry flavored milk throughout the day as an act of defiance to the government. How good is that? So in Merthyr,

you would still have got milk in the 80s. It would just have been strawberry flavour throughout the day. I've got friends from Merthyr. I'm going to text them all after we finish recording. Isn't that brilliant? Do you remember the 1980s strawberry milk phenomenon? That is so funny. I love strawberry. Strawberry milk is my favourite milk actually. It is. I love strawberry milk. I said it was coconut milk. I'm now saying it's strawberry milk. I said it was coconut milk, I'm now saying it's strawberry milk. I thought it was chocolate milk, you raved about chocolate milk.

No, I do like a chocolate milk, but actually strawberry milk shake's my favourite. The idea of being given that for free every day at school. You've got the most eclectic taste buds of anyone I've ever met. Because you love quite exotic spicy food. Yep. So you would think that that would mean you left choco milk behind. But all of the stuff you liked drinking and eating when you were very little, that's still in there. But spicy food causes heartburn. What do you need for heartburn?

Strawberry milk. It's a big milky. Exactly. As it happens, you are still more likely to encounter free milk in schools in Wales today than anywhere in Britain, which is one small legacy of one local authority's determination to say no to Westminster. So in some areas of Wales, you still do get a lovely glass of milk to help you with your day. My kids used to have milk in their state primary school in South London. So I don't know if they brought it back in. But yeah, my kids have milk.

There we go. So that is the milk float. They both tower over me, age of 10 and 5. Beat my bench press records. Slam dunking on your head every day. Well, that's it for milk. Love that. What a way to start the new year, milk. We'll be back.

Good stuff. Yes, good. A surprisingly diverse topic, actually. A diverse topic. Like milk, in fact, it was good stuff. We'll be back next week with space. And don't forget, if you want even more Oh, What A Time bonus episodes, early release, ad free, all that good stuff

you can subscribe via Wondry or another slice and both of your options for those things are at owhatatime.com. Otherwise, we'll see you next week. Bye! Bye! So So So Follow Oh What A Time on the Wondry app, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts and you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts. And before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry.com slash survey.