Milk plays such an important role in nutrition that FAO, the UN specialized agency that leads international efforts to eradicate hunger, designated a special day for its celebration.

World Milk Day was established in 2001, and June 1 was chosen as the date because many countries were already celebrating milk during that time of year, and since then more and more nations have joined in, demonstrating the immense value of this food as a nutritional pillar of humanity.

Celebrating World Milk Day gives us the opportunity to focus attention on milk and raise awareness of its role in healthy diets, responsible food production and supporting the livelihoods of the one billion people involved in its production, and the more than six billion people who consume dairy worldwide.

How much we talk about milk every day, and how much more we could say in its honor! Noble food that has been with us since time immemorial. We celebrate real milk, and we celebrate the cows that provide it and the people who raise them, the dairy farmers and their family legacy, the industry that manufactures it and you who make it part of your daily life and your history.

Milk is the first food for humans, it nourishes and energizes us, it forms and shapes us, unique in the first stage of life, and a fundamental complement in all the stages to come, childhood, adolescence, youth, adulthood and old age.

Milk is in our culture and traditions, present in our most precious recipes, making everything more nutritious, richer and creamier. In a world where we are constantly exposed to multiple voices trying to convince us that we are vulnerable to what we grew up believing was good for us, it is comforting to remember that it is ultimately good that gives us pleasure.

Milk has been designed by nature, and is not only the most complete food ever created, it is the result of a perfect biological cycle that mankind learned to interpret more than 10,000 years ago, and intervened forever modifying our cognitive, skeletal and muscular development.

Milk is delicious, it’s ancestral, it’s cultural and it’s healthy!

Let’s toast today, with a glass of milk!

Valeria Guzmán Hamann