Check out that amazingly fat creamline on local milk from our community dairy. With all the rain we have had this year the grass is growing fast and luscious and our cows are just lovin’ it. Is this the big secret Big Dairy is working so hard to keep under wraps? Informed consumers are harder to manipulate.

Creamline vs Homogenization [More info here]

When packaging in glass bottles came in toward the start of the twentieth century, one of its advantages from a buyer’s point of view was the plainly visible “creamline.”

Milk processors and distributors loved the fact that the cardboard couldn’t be seen through, which incidentally solved the oxidation problem. It was the perfect moment for abolishing creamline milk and substituting a product whose appearance had previously weighed against it. (homogenized milk)

A commercial dairy could now calculate the amount of fat in incoming milk completely remove it, and homogenize it back into the milk in any desired proportion, which putting any surplus to other purposes such as butter or ice cream. In effect, “whole milk” could now be whatever the industry said it was.

Above quotes are from Anne Mendelson’s book Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages