Staff Profile

Publication details for Professor Peter Atkins

Atkins, P.J. Fattening children or fattening farmers? School milk in Britain, 1921-1941. Economic History Review. 2005;58:57-78.

• Publication type: Journal papers: academic
• ISSN/ISBN: 0013-0117, 1468-0289
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0289.2005.00298.x
• View online: Online version
• Durham research online: DRO record

Author(s) from Durham

• Professor Peter Atkins

Abstract

Fattening children or fattening farmers? School milk in Britain, 1921-1941. The introduction of school milk in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century was a relatively slow process. This article seeks to understand state and private sector initiatives in the light of four issues: nutrition, political factors, problems in the dairy industry, and the moulding of the consumers of the future. Overall, the nutritional benefits of school milk are debatable, possibly even negative in those areas where it replaced other foods; but the dairy industry did well, creating new markets at a time of depression. After the war school milk reached the zenith of its popularity.