Whole milk FTW!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I have been convinced for years that lowfat dairy is bad news. So much so that when our WIC coupons changed from full-fat to lowfat milk and cheese, I insisted that my wife not use those (and no, I’m not some Baptist patriarch who rules the roost like a tyrant: if my wife feels very strongly about something, *she *gets *her *way), even though it put extra strain on our already-tight grocery budget.

She went along grudgingly these past few years with what I think she saw as my eccentric preference (which certainly was not in line with that of the mainstream authorities). But not only did she miss the coupons, she kind of sighed/cringed as she watched me get into a debate with our family doctor over this issue when he was advising a switch to lowfat milk. (He, like most doctors, did not appreciate having his advice questioned.)

So it warmed my heart when she emailed me this Washington Post story this morning, with an affectionate invitiation for me to “go ahead and do [my] victory dance”:

For decades, the government steered millions away from whole milk. Was that wrong?

A key quote is buried way down at the bottom (although the history in between is instructive):

Suck it, health authorities! :stuck_out_tongue:

But of course, as the article also notes, “there is always a lag between evidence and changes in attitude”, so expect to see this advocacy of lowfat dairy stubbornly persist for some years to come. :smack:

2

For us non-Americans - what’s the fat percentages of “whole” and “skim” milks?

3

Whole is about 3.5%. Skim is basically 0%. Then there are others that are self-explanatory: 2% milk, 1% milk, and I’ve even seen 1/2% milk–although not in some years.

4

Here’s another nugget of info from an NPR story last year:

5

My grandma used to tell a story about going to a doctor one time. This doctor actually knew something about nutrition. She was surprised when he told her to use butter instead of margarine, and asked him why.

He said, “If animal fat is so bad for us, how did we ever get any ancestors?”

6

Buried in the story was the suggestion that people who consumed less milk fat may have substituted carbs for the fat. I have always taken the government recommendations with a grain of salt. Although I do drink 2% milk, I love cheese and consume a lot of it. In fact, in about an hour I will make some cheese: ricotta starting from 2% and then some mozzarella starting from what they call “whole milk” (3.25%).

There has not been margarine in our house in the 51+ years I have been married. Reason: taste. I don’t eat a lot of butter, but butter is what I eat.

Anyway, over the years I have decided that none of the dietary guidelines have any strong evidence. I think the evidence against sugar is strenghtening though.

7

Yeah, I think as a general rule of thumb the foods that are worst for us are the ones that have had the most processing. Sugar, refined flour, hydrogenated oils. And of course whole milk has had less processing than low fat milk.

8

My fridge is much like Hari’s, 2% milk, lots of cheese and real butter… salted even. And we’re all working hard to cut sugars from our diet wherever we can.

I’m trying to remember the last time I had whole milk though. I refuse to drink skim because of the taste and texture. I wonder for a 2%'er going in the opposite direction if whole milk will have the same effect, seem just too rich. I guess I’ll pick some up on the way home tonight and see for myself, considering it’s ‘finally healthy again.’

9

If you think about the economics of milk-fat, the milk producers have a lot of incentive to encourage people to buy lower fat milk for nearly the same price as higher fat milk. The producer then gets to sell that milk-fat, which is in high demand for use in cream, butter, cheese, ice cream, etc.

10

It takes getting used to if you are accustomed to lower fat milk, but it shouldn’t be too great a transition from 2%.

11

So going against hard evidence of the time, you followed your gut instinct which happened to turn out to be correct. The very basis of faith, that the individual can personally come to correct solutions, and know it, and be driven to follow them, to the contrary of scientific opinion.

12

Great point, voltaire. What did they do, I wonder, back when whole milk was the dominant form of milk people drank but there was clearly demand for cream for butter, ice cream, and for that matter in coffee, before the days of nondairy creamer?

13

My grandfather was a dairyman in the 1930s-40s, and his family drank full cream in their coffee. My farm-dwelling grandparents did as well, and used real cream on their oatmeal, too.

Cream was in the milk anyway – remember shaking milk before drinking? That’s why people did it, initially.

I also use 2% milk, but with real cheese and salted butter. But I only cook with the milk, and that not often. I don’t drink milk at all.

Not sugars so much for me, but I do lose more weight when I increase protein/fruit/veg and decrease simple carbs (like bread…god I love good bread). I didn’t go all whacko Paleo last year, but I did make that change and lost 50#. I’ve kept off 47.

I don’t worry about sugars, really. I allow myself one real Coca-cola a day, plus the flavored creamer in my AM coffee. Coffee at work, I use splenda and half and half. And I get a couple of cookies, but they’re GOOD – real shortbread.

I stopped following advice du jour when I realized that my grandparents and great-grandparents and great-great grandparents lived into their 80s and 90s, healthy, and didn’t follow any of that. They ate real food and took exercise (in the form of work and/or walks). Two of my grandmothers had real sweet tooths (teeth?) and ate cookies or pie when they wanted, but since homemade was the norm, there was a limit to what was around. Works for me.

BTW, I’m making apple crisp tonight with some Ginger Gold apples.

14

I don’t drink milk, and eat only a little butter, but maybe this is the sign I need to switch from non-fat to full-fat yogurt.

15

It was not gut instinct. There was a scientist whose name I am forgetting but who had been dismissed as a crank for many years. He preached against refined flour and hydrogenated oils, and advocated eating natural animal fats. I noticed over time that the chips were increasingly falling in his corner, along with Atkins and the low carb crowd. (I sadly have to admit that I was initially resistant to low carb, including in debates on a board that is a cousin to this one, AFCA. But I changed my mind as I saw the data come in, something I pride myself on.)

And on dairy specifically, the clincher was when I read an item about a decade ago describing what was seen as a curious result in the study of infertility. The eating patterns associated with female infertility were mostly the usual suspects (processed carbs) while those associated with higher fertility were also the usual suspects of minimally processed fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes, and whole grains. But the article mentioned as an aside a curious glitch in the data: lowfat dairy was on the infertility side of the ledger, while the opposite was true for full fat dairy. It was only at this point that I switched: up until then I had been drinking 1% or even half percent milk. (I only avoided skin because of the taste.)

That was also when my general principle of eating minimally processed food and not trying to improve on nature came into sharp focus. It helped that around this same time, data was coming in showing that vitamin supplements were providing disappointing results or even negative results when it came to trials attempting to use them to prevent heart disease, cancer, and other major lifestyle diseases. So I stopped buying supplements (I had taken quite a few up to that point) and concentrated on eating a diverse diet of minimally processed foods. And that has served me well ever since, and has yet to be contradicted by scientific evidence.

16

I’ve decided that nonfat yogurt is a scam. So much sugar, and not enough calories to fill you up in any meaningful way. I don’t see how it’s healthy other than some placebo effect that makes you think “well even though I am absolutely starving, I ate that Yoplait a half hour ago so I will just wait until lunch to eat again.”

It’s hard enough to find the 2% fat yogurt in our store so I haven’t even tried to look for anything higher, but 2% at least has some calories to it and makes for a good, filling snack.

As for whole milk…I’ve always been partial to skim milk so there’s no way I could ever switch. Blech. Real cheese and butter for me, tho.

17

Whoops, make that “avoided skim”, not “skin”. (I composed that one on my phone, so only one transcription error’s not bad.)

Full-fat yogurt is so much better, but it’s hard to find in some stores (hopefully this will start changing now!). I eat some (also unsweetened, natch) daily, mixed with blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, peaches (again, all with no added sugar) and a little flaxseed granola dusted on top. Yum. :slight_smile:

Shaking the milk is “before my time”, except that I’ve tried some non-homogenized organic milk that was supposed to be shaken before drinking. The problem I found with that is that the cream didn’t seem to really mix in even then. It stayed in little discrete glops and the whole thing was kind of weird and unappetizing. It’s too bad because, again, I’d prefer to stay as minimally processed as possible.

But so: did your grandfather say what they did with the skim or reduced-fat milk that was left when they skimmed off cream to use in coffee and oatmeal? Was this just treated as a waste product, or what?

18

My family does full fat dairy or none at all. The other day I almost flew into a rage at the grocery store trying to find any plain yogurt that wasn’t non-fat. I finally found some, and of course it was 4 times as expensive and only in very large containers.

19

Oh yeah, the minimal amount available at my store is only in the large containers. I’ve never seen any in small containers.

20

See, that’s just ignorant. If you actually knew how sugar’s made, you’d realize it’s literally a physical refining process that separates the sucrose from the rest of the crap. It doesn’t make it any less healthy than unrefined sugar.

Flour, for the most part is the same- it’s a physical process that keeps the desired part, and discards the rest. If there’s anything that makes it “evil” it would be the bleaching.

Milk is no different- I’m pretty sure they just centrifuge off all the fat, and then add back the proper amount for 1% and 2% milk AND whole milk. They want their whole milk to have a consistent fat content, so they add back exactly what they want. Other than changing the fat percentage versus the product straight out of the cow, it doesn’t materially change the milk at all.

Hydrogenated oils… yeah, those are not great.

But the ultimate point is that “processed food” is one of those idiot buzzwords that doesn’t even mean anything realistic in most contexts. It’s likely not the food we’re eating per-se, but rather the fact that we’re eating more of it, and that a lot of latter-day convenience and pre-prepared foods are high in sugar, salt and fat because that tastes good, even if it’s not particularly good for anyone.

By that, I mean that back in the day, the “Quarter Pounder” was the largest burger at McDonald’s, and the kind of thing suitable for grown men, while everyone else made do with 1/8 lb burgers. Nowadays many places have 1/3 lb burgers as their standard, and offer 1/2 pound burgers as the large choice. Think potato chips- growing up, a lunch-box sized bag of chips was maybe 1/2 oz of actual chips- you got maybe 10 chips in that little bag, and that was the standard single-serving bag. You can’t even find bags that small anymore- even the “lunch” sized ones are 1.5-2x that size.

Combine that with the addition of extra sugar, salt and fat into most pre-prepared/convenience foods, and you have a recipe for health problems.

Ultimately what’s helping you is your diverse diet, and the likely emphasis on fruits, vegetables and making it yourself, not any phantom benefits from minimal processing. In other words, if you ate the same diet, and had coffee creamer rather than real cream, it isn’t going to make one whit of difference to your health. But if 80% of your diet is pre-prepared/convenience foods, you’ll get far more sugar, salt and fat than is healthy, and THAT is what’ll cause you issues, not some thing to do with the other ingredients in those foods.