EAT YOUR VEGETABLES: Nutrition & the NC Extension Service

According to nutritionists, milk was the perfect food. Elmer McCollum heralded the regular consumption of milk as “the greatest factor of safety in the human diet,” a view promoted by the North Carolina Agricultural Extension Service beginning in the 1910s. As the Extension Service’s bulletin Milk for the Whole Family explained, “The first food a family should have is MILK, and the last food to be dispensed with is MILK. It is not the only food, but it is the most important food.”

Milk’s superiority rested on its nutritive laurels, which was backed by scientific evidence. As food specialist Cornelia C. Morris explains in Five Lessons in Preparation of Food for North Carolina Home Demonstration Club Girls, a bulletin published by the North Carolina Agricultural Extension Service in 1924: “In reviewing the classes of foods one food stands out beyond all others and that food is milk, for it contains water, mineral matter, protein, fats, carbohydrates and vitamines.” Milk not only contained all the elements of food essential to health, it was also a good fuel, providing “energy which enables the body to work.” Even more, it contained all of the known “vitamines” discovered to date: A, B, and C. As Milk for the Whole Family pointed out, “Milk is the one common food which supplies all vitamines. Do you dare slight the use of Milk?” Furthermore, milk’s versatility meant it could be incorporated into the diet in a number of ways. Poured over cereal, transformed into cream soups, churned into butter—milk could take many forms.

For all of these reasons and more, nutrition guides emphasized that it was very important to give milk to children. “It gives them rosy cheeks, bright eyes, strong bodies, and good brains,” explained Milk for the Whole Family, appealing to a parent’s concern for their children in order to promote good nutrition. In the picture above, a sign echoes this sentiment: “Children must have milk. It insures normal physical and mental development.”