Cities and milk consumption in Europe, 1890-1936: the emergence of a new market in Spain

Abstract

One of the main features of the European nutritional transition involved the wide-spread increase in milk consumption, a singular process as it involved the emergence of new consumption preferences.This transformation will be examined here using Spain as a case study. Even up until the 1890s milk was not considered a valuable dietary component in Spain, and was normally consumed only by those who were on liquid diets for medical reasons.By the 1930s,however,milk was regarded as a basic foodstuff, especially for children. Our main hypothesis is that cities played a central role in this change in preferences. [...]