42.
Remnants of Swiss Milk Culture
In the Footsteps of Dr. Weston A. Price
By Linda Joyce
In his global travels during the 1930s, Weston A. Price sought out locations where people were not yet eating what he called
the “displacing food of modern commerce.” One of the places Price visited was Switzerland’s Lötschental--an isolated valley then only accessible by a footpath. It was so isolated from the rest of Switzerland, let alone the world, that the residents existed on what they could grow in the valley, with no food brought in from outside, with the exception of salt.
Their diet primarily consisted of dairy products (raw milk, butter, cream and raw milk cheese) from cows grazing on lush alpine slopes, and rye bread, or roggenbrot, from rye grown in the valley. They ate little meat about once a week and some vegetables during the summer months. The raw milk, butter and cream from cows eating lush green grass were a rich source of vitamins A and D.
With the help of a Swiss dentist who was his travel companion and the community elders, Price was able to examine the mouths of many valley inhabitants. He reported that the majority of the residents had healthy, straight teeth. Price only found one cavity in every three mouths, which was about 1 percent tooth decay.
Both adults and children had broad, well-developed faces and palates, good dispositions and sturdy bodies. He noted that the children played barefoot in frigid streams during cold weather and that there were no cases of TB in the valley.
In other parts of Switzerland, Price studied the “modernized Swiss,” who lived in towns accessible by roads and therefore got their food from stores selling sugar, white flour, pastries, jams and jellies, canned condensed milk, canned foods and vegetable oils.
They were experiencing dental caries in one tooth in three, or 33 percent tooth decay, and the younger generations had dental deformities, overlapping, crowded and crooked teeth and narrow faces. TB was a huge problem in these communities.
the “displacing food of modern commerce.” One of the places Price visited was Switzerland’s Lötschental--an isolated valley then only accessible by a footpath. It was so isolated from the rest of Switzerland, let alone the world, that the residents existed on what they could grow in the valley, with no food brought in from outside, with the exception of salt.
Their diet primarily consisted of dairy products (raw milk, butter, cream and raw milk cheese) from cows grazing on lush alpine slopes, and rye bread, or roggenbrot, from rye grown in the valley. They ate little meat about once a week and some vegetables during the summer months. The raw milk, butter and cream from cows eating lush green grass were a rich source of vitamins A and D.
With the help of a Swiss dentist who was his travel companion and the community elders, Price was able to examine the mouths of many valley inhabitants. He reported that the majority of the residents had healthy, straight teeth. Price only found one cavity in every three mouths, which was about 1 percent tooth decay.
Both adults and children had broad, well-developed faces and palates, good dispositions and sturdy bodies. He noted that the children played barefoot in frigid streams during cold weather and that there were no cases of TB in the valley.
In other parts of Switzerland, Price studied the “modernized Swiss,” who lived in towns accessible by roads and therefore got their food from stores selling sugar, white flour, pastries, jams and jellies, canned condensed milk, canned foods and vegetable oils.
They were experiencing dental caries in one tooth in three, or 33 percent tooth decay, and the younger generations had dental deformities, overlapping, crowded and crooked teeth and narrow faces. TB was a huge problem in these communities.
Revisiting The Valley
In June of 2003, about 70 years after Price’s visit, I revisited the Lötschental. The valley consists of four small picturesque towns accessible by car and bus from the entrance of the valley near the train station. At the far end of valley is a glacier.
Price described the good health and sturdiness of the Lötschental men who often took jobs in the Pope’s Swiss Guard. They also served the kingdoms of Versailles and Naples and were mercenaries in foreign countries.
The day after I arrived, the locals were constructing mini altars to honor the Virgin Mary, several in each of the valley towns. The backdrop for each altar was pine branches cut from the alpine forest. On the next day, the townspeople assembled and ceremonially marched to the church for a special mass.
Despite all this religious activity, there was no evidence of an ancient ceremony recalled by Price--lighting a wick in a bowl of the first spring butter--to honor the life-giving force contained therein.
According to Price, the wick was permitted to burn in a special sanctuary built for the purpose. At least back then, the natives recognized the superior quality of their June butter, perhaps without really understanding why. At first impression, it seems that this ceremony is now forgotten.
Price described the good health and sturdiness of the Lötschental men who often took jobs in the Pope’s Swiss Guard. They also served the kingdoms of Versailles and Naples and were mercenaries in foreign countries.
The day after I arrived, the locals were constructing mini altars to honor the Virgin Mary, several in each of the valley towns. The backdrop for each altar was pine branches cut from the alpine forest. On the next day, the townspeople assembled and ceremonially marched to the church for a special mass.
Despite all this religious activity, there was no evidence of an ancient ceremony recalled by Price--lighting a wick in a bowl of the first spring butter--to honor the life-giving force contained therein.
According to Price, the wick was permitted to burn in a special sanctuary built for the purpose. At least back then, the natives recognized the superior quality of their June butter, perhaps without really understanding why. At first impression, it seems that this ceremony is now forgotten.
Vanishing Agriculture
The tourism authority for the valley, Lötschental Tourism, always ends their emails with the signature, “Friendly Greeting from the Valley of Valleys.” It is a beautiful valley and one to be proud of for its majestic scenery and beautiful architecture.
However, what I saw in the valley was a culture in danger of losing its agricultural roots. To be blunt, junk foods abounded. While our half-board arrangement at the hotel gave us a good breakfast with cheese and bread in the morning and a hot meal for the evening meal, it was hard to find good food in the stores. And we were served pale, commercial butter with each meal instead of golden alpine butter, rich in nutrients.
Some restaurants still serve rye bread and raw milk cheese as an entrée or appetizer, but most of the small stores are filled with processed foods like chips, candy and soft drinks. Oftentimes, alpine butter sat next to ultra-high temperature pasteurized (UHT) milk on the grocery shelf. Switzerland is, after all, headquarters to Nestlé.
However, what I saw in the valley was a culture in danger of losing its agricultural roots. To be blunt, junk foods abounded. While our half-board arrangement at the hotel gave us a good breakfast with cheese and bread in the morning and a hot meal for the evening meal, it was hard to find good food in the stores. And we were served pale, commercial butter with each meal instead of golden alpine butter, rich in nutrients.
Some restaurants still serve rye bread and raw milk cheese as an entrée or appetizer, but most of the small stores are filled with processed foods like chips, candy and soft drinks. Oftentimes, alpine butter sat next to ultra-high temperature pasteurized (UHT) milk on the grocery shelf. Switzerland is, after all, headquarters to Nestlé.
Dwindling Dairies
During our stay in the valley, we learned that the inhabitants are slowly abandoning farming due to the fact that they cannot make a living wage. Over the past few decades a large exodus from the valley to look for work has left the older inhabitants to take care of the dwindling dairies. Most of these workers are women.
When I finally sufficiently explained my desire to the valley tourism officials to see “cows and milk,” I was taken to a spot off the main valley road called Chiemad--Kühmad, or “cow path.”
With our guide in lead, we walked up a very long steep hill through a pasture towards a lean-to in the far distance. I was told this is where we would find some cows and hopefully some signs of activity and someone to interview. I was rapidly loosing steam and were out of breath, when we saw a dairywoman approaching at fast pace down the path we were struggling so hard to ascend.
I asked the tourism official to ask her to stop so I could take a picture, but he would not. So, I tried to get her attention, but she just kept moving--either ashamed or shy of getting her picture taken. Hence, I got pictures of her coming and going, with a 50-pound container of milk strapped to her back.
As she continued to descend, we kept going up the pasture towards the aforementioned lean-tos. When we arrived, we found a couple of cows in the shack resting after having been milked. I was told they would probably stay there the night and be let out the morning to forage on the alpine grass and flowers again. By the time we were finished looking around, the woman had disappeared.
The morning of my departure, I was determined to make a deeper connection to what appeared to be the vanishing dairy culture of the valley. Unable to persuade the tourism officials to take me to a high-alpine dairy above 3,000 meters, I decided to camp out at the valley’s main cheese factory in Wiler to see who came to deposit their morning milk.
First, a local milk lady arrived with milk cans on a humble pull cart. After about a half hour, a muscular and tanned woman arrived with several milk cans piled in the back of her SUV. She had just milked her cows on the high-alpine pasture and had driven the milk down to the dairy. She only spoke German, so I interviewed her with my intermediate German skills. I found out that she only had six cows and spent the summer living with them at high altitude. I so wished I had been introduced to her on the day of my arrival.
Through my research, I learned that the main Lötschental dairy makes three kinds of cheese. First, there is Lötschental Mutschli, which is made from both raw and pasteurized milk and is formed into small wheels weighing one-half to one kilogram, and then aged 6-12 weeks. It is championed as a cheeese that captures the taste of alpine flora.
The bulk of the valley’s milk goes into cut cheese, a second kind of cheese in which the curdled milk is cut to produce curds and then pressed to express the whey and form 2-5 kg wheels or logs.
My favorite is the third kind of Lötschental cheese, Hobel käse, a hard cheese made exclusively from raw milk that is typically fashioned into large wheels and then aged 1-3 years. Unfortunately, the dairy store was never open for business when I passed by--and definitely not early in the morning when the dairywomen come to deposit their milk.
When I got home, I decided to contact the Swiss government to obtain agriculture data about the valley. Although it took a few months, I was finally presented with some astoundingly interesting data from the Census of Agricultural Establishment that dates back to the 1920s.
Since agriculture has historically been very important to Switzerland, the government has gathered agricultural data for decades. That data includes the number of agriculture establishments in the Lötschental, obtained by combining data from all four villages.
In 1929, the Lötschental was home to 205 farms and employed 690 farm workers aged 15 or older, but by the year 2000, the official number of farms had fallen to 75 and the full-time workers to 13. Also, the valley has made some steps to embrace ski tourism as a path to economic development and some of the pastures have been lost to ski chalets.
When I finally sufficiently explained my desire to the valley tourism officials to see “cows and milk,” I was taken to a spot off the main valley road called Chiemad--Kühmad, or “cow path.”
With our guide in lead, we walked up a very long steep hill through a pasture towards a lean-to in the far distance. I was told this is where we would find some cows and hopefully some signs of activity and someone to interview. I was rapidly loosing steam and were out of breath, when we saw a dairywoman approaching at fast pace down the path we were struggling so hard to ascend.
I asked the tourism official to ask her to stop so I could take a picture, but he would not. So, I tried to get her attention, but she just kept moving--either ashamed or shy of getting her picture taken. Hence, I got pictures of her coming and going, with a 50-pound container of milk strapped to her back.
As she continued to descend, we kept going up the pasture towards the aforementioned lean-tos. When we arrived, we found a couple of cows in the shack resting after having been milked. I was told they would probably stay there the night and be let out the morning to forage on the alpine grass and flowers again. By the time we were finished looking around, the woman had disappeared.
The morning of my departure, I was determined to make a deeper connection to what appeared to be the vanishing dairy culture of the valley. Unable to persuade the tourism officials to take me to a high-alpine dairy above 3,000 meters, I decided to camp out at the valley’s main cheese factory in Wiler to see who came to deposit their morning milk.
First, a local milk lady arrived with milk cans on a humble pull cart. After about a half hour, a muscular and tanned woman arrived with several milk cans piled in the back of her SUV. She had just milked her cows on the high-alpine pasture and had driven the milk down to the dairy. She only spoke German, so I interviewed her with my intermediate German skills. I found out that she only had six cows and spent the summer living with them at high altitude. I so wished I had been introduced to her on the day of my arrival.
Through my research, I learned that the main Lötschental dairy makes three kinds of cheese. First, there is Lötschental Mutschli, which is made from both raw and pasteurized milk and is formed into small wheels weighing one-half to one kilogram, and then aged 6-12 weeks. It is championed as a cheeese that captures the taste of alpine flora.
The bulk of the valley’s milk goes into cut cheese, a second kind of cheese in which the curdled milk is cut to produce curds and then pressed to express the whey and form 2-5 kg wheels or logs.
My favorite is the third kind of Lötschental cheese, Hobel käse, a hard cheese made exclusively from raw milk that is typically fashioned into large wheels and then aged 1-3 years. Unfortunately, the dairy store was never open for business when I passed by--and definitely not early in the morning when the dairywomen come to deposit their milk.
When I got home, I decided to contact the Swiss government to obtain agriculture data about the valley. Although it took a few months, I was finally presented with some astoundingly interesting data from the Census of Agricultural Establishment that dates back to the 1920s.
Since agriculture has historically been very important to Switzerland, the government has gathered agricultural data for decades. That data includes the number of agriculture establishments in the Lötschental, obtained by combining data from all four villages.
In 1929, the Lötschental was home to 205 farms and employed 690 farm workers aged 15 or older, but by the year 2000, the official number of farms had fallen to 75 and the full-time workers to 13. Also, the valley has made some steps to embrace ski tourism as a path to economic development and some of the pastures have been lost to ski chalets.
Another source of data was the Federal Population Census, which counts not only people but livestock as well. Although the dates don’t quite match, these figures show the number of “milking cows” in the Lötschental over almost seven decades--and tell a similar story.
I did not find one person who knew who Dr. Weston A. Price was or had heard of his travels to the valley. Although the valley and region has tourist offerings all year long, I believe summer is the best time to see the remnants of its milk culture.
“People have traditionally turned to ritual to help them frame and acknowledge and ultimately even find joy in just such a paradox of being human - in the fact that so much of what we desire for our happiness and need for our survival comes at a heavy cost. We kill to eat, we cut down trees to build our homes, we exploit other people and the earth. Sacrifice - of nature, of the interests of others, even of our earlier selves - appears to be an inescapable part of our condition, the unavoidable price of all our achievements.
A successful ritual is one that addresses both aspects of our predicament, recalling us to the shamefulness of our deeds at the same time it celebrates what the poet Frederick Turner calls "the beauty we have paid for with our shame." Without the double awareness pricked by such rituals, people are liable to find themselves either plundering the earth without restraint or descending into self-loathing and misanthropy. Perhaps it's not surprising that most of us today bring one of those attitudes or the other to our conduct in nature.”
~Michael Pollan, A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder