Joke: How do you dramatically increase sales of a new or unpopular food product to the American public?
Answer: Call it a health food!
This joke, while funny, is also very sad as it illustrates with humor what common sense, logic, observation, and facts cannot for the vast majority of Westerners. Time and time again, Americans are completely duped by the clever marketing of a food product, falling all over themselves to buy it just because it has been touted in the media and by their (equally duped) doctors as a food that will improve their health.
Don’t believe it? How about margarine? Americans, in the span of just a few short years after World War II, all but completely shunned butter and this behavior pattern continued for decades because saturated fat was supposedly the demon of heart disease. See my blog which explains the truth about butter. Americans are finally waking up to the fact that butter is a wonderful, truly natural health food. Margarine and fake butter spreads like Smart Balance are ironically the culprits that contribute to heart disease!
What about soy and soy milk? This is another supposed “health food” that has been proven to do nothing but cause an epidemic of hypothyroidism in the Western world (you know the symptoms: overweight, losing your hair, depressed, tired all the time). Soy in Asia, as it has been consumed for thousands of years, is always fermented for long periods of time before it can be safely consumed – and even then – in very small quantities! The modern processing of soy which involves grinding up the leftover soy protein, the waste product in the production of soy oil, and putting it in all manner of food products which line our grocery store shelves makes for a dangerous and health robbing line of consumer goods.
I also blogged recently about the latest healthfood scam:Â agave nectar. Here again, is an example of a new food that was marketed using the “health food” label. This approach to selling to the American people is obviously working as these products are readily available in most health food stores despite the fact that this product has a more deadly concentration of fructose than the high fructose corn syrup in soda!
Now, On to Skim Milk!
Hopefully, you are now convinced that labeling an item as a “health food” is a frequently used approach for selling something to the American public. Skim milk falls into this same category.
Prior to World War II, Americans didn’t ever drink skim or low-fat milk. Drinking such a product to stay “thin and healthy” would have been laughable. Americans would only drink whole milk. In fact, the larger the cream line on their milk, the higher the quality of the milk and the more likely the consumer was to buy it. Milk wasn’t homogenized in those days, so a consumer could easily see the distinct cream line on the milk to determine quality.
Cream has been considered a true health food for centuries. In Ancient Greece, Olympic athletes drank a bowlful of cream to give them strength and endurance before a competition. Why? Because cream steadies blood sugar for an extended period of time. No ups and downs in insulin when your diet has lots of wonderful saturated fat in it. It is only when you eat low-fat that blood sugar issues such as diabetes and hypoglycemia tend to arise.
So, how did skim milk come to be recognized as a health food in America? It all ties back to the demonization of saturated fats that began shortly after World War II. Americans started to abandon butter and cream in droves about this time because studies had apparently shown that saturated fat was linked to the growing number of heart disease cases in America. Never mind that atherosclerosis (clogged arteries) was virtually unknown prior to the mid-1920s when Americans drowned everything in cream and butter. Logic and observation clearly indicated that saturated fat could not possibly be the cause of heart disease – it was obviously something new that had been introduced into the American diet. Of course, this “something” is partially hydrogenated fats which were introduced around 1921 (Enter the first transfat … Crisco. Bingo! First documented heart attack from atherosclerosis in 1927, and it rapidly got worse from there). These factory fats are primarily responsible for the epidemic of heart disease yet saturated fats took the fall anyway.
With Americans abandoning whole milk due to its high saturated fat content, skim milk was touted as the new heart-healthy food. Americans bought the scam hook, line, and sinker. Skim milk was the new king of the dairy aisle. This behavior pattern has continued for decades despite the average American getting fatter and fatter and the cases of heart disease showing no signs of abating.
In the 1990s with the beginnings of the childhood obesity epidemic, doctors even started to encourage parents to switch their children to skim or low-fat milk around age 2. This foolish recommendation has done nothing but make kids fatter (source).
How does drinking skim milk make kids (and adults) fatter? This apparent paradox occurs when you reduce the saturated fat in a person’s diet and he/she turns to carbs (grains and sugars primarily) to fill in the gap. It is the grains and sugars that truly make you fat, not saturated fat. I’ve said before on this blog that the more butter and cream I eat, the easier it is to maintain my weight. MUCH easier. The same goes for all of us. If you drink skim milk, you will be missing out on the satiating, blood sugar and insulin steadying effects of saturated fat, so your body will automatically give you sugar and carb (grains) cravings to make up for it. The body is able to MAKE saturated fat out of sugars, hence the sugar cravings that are impossible to control when you eat a low-fat diet that includes skim milk.
Try it! Increase your consumption of butter, whole milk yogurt, and whole milk cheese for a few days and watch your sugar cravings rapidly diminish!
Another big secret is that Big Dairy adds skim milk powder to skim milk. Here’s an excerpt from “Dirty Secrets of the Food Processing Industry” from the Weston A. Price Website:
A note on the production of skim milk powder: liquid milk is forced through a tiny hole at high pressure, and then blown out into the air. This causes a lot of nitrates to form and the cholesterol in the milk is oxidized. Those of you who are familiar with my work know that cholesterol is your best friend; you don’t have to worry about natural cholesterol in your food; however, you do not want to eat oxidized cholesterol. Oxidized cholesterol contributes to the buildup of plaque in the arteries, to atherosclerosis. So when you drink reduced-fat milk thinking that it will help you avoid heart disease, you are actually consuming oxidized cholesterol, which initiates the process of heart disease.
One parting fact: pig farmers love feeding skim milk to their pigs. Why? It makes them REALLY fat! Still want to drink your skim milk? I hope not.
Still confused about fat? Please see my healthy shopping list for where to buy healthy fats and oils.
More Information
Why Milk Matters and Why it isn’t Just for Baby Cows
101 Uses for Raw Milk that has Soured
A1 and A2 Milk: Do Cow Genetics Even Matter?
A1 and A2 Factor in Raw Milk
I just found this article. I’ve been buying 2% milk because I can no longer buy raw milk, and figured that 2% is better than homogenized whole milk. Is that not true?
Just a quick note. Go to WAPF and search for "How We Eat: Food Journals of the Weston A. Price Foundation Board of Directors"
I have proof that skim milk makes you fat, I got SUPER fat when I was pregnant – gained like 70 lbs, and when I looked back at my food diary, I was drinking tons of skim milk.
I always had weight issues when I drank it, and now that I don't, I weigh 128 lbs without exercising – less than I did when I was in high school.
I drank lowfat milk with my last pregnancy, but only because whole milk made me feel sick to my stomach. On the other hand, it was CAFO industrial grocery-store milk. Since then I’ve gained access to milk from a local grass-fed dairy and I wish I’d had it back then, I’m curious to know whether their whole milk would have had the same effect. It’s low-temp pasteurized, but it is not homogenized and it’s sold very fresh.
Can I get that super sized? Cookies anyone.? What hormones??
Could that fact that you were drinking “TONS” of skim milk have anything to do with why you gained so much? Of course. You were taking in too many calories, and a calorie surplus is going to cause weight gain, no matter where the calories come from
Hi Christine, just ask any pig farmer how he gets his pigs fat really quick. Skim milk does the trick everytime. The proof is in the fallacy of the lowfat diet. The Weston A. Price Foundation has oodles of info on how the lowfat diet will make you very unhealthy .. no traditional cultures anywhere in the world EVER ate this way.
Read the book called “The Untold Story of Milk” and it has numerous medical facts concerning whole milk and especially raw milk. Yes, skim milk has been used as a trash feed for animals for many years and it is not any new information. One just has to be in the farming industry and you would know all about it.
Pigs are not fat they are large animals no matter what you feed them they will grow big. Farmers are paid for the leanness of the pork that is produced from their pigs, and therefore feed them an optimum (Low-fat) diet to produce meat, not fat. High fat content pork can actually be rejected by the butcher or factory, and deducted from the income that the farmer receives. Thats why farmers feed pigs skim milk.
Keisha, please put some bacon on your fork, because you clearly don’t realise that pigs do in fact have a high fat composition. You are referring to special lean cuts of meat which have had fat removed so lean cuts of pork can be sold.
WOW you are a lost cause. Pork is 80% fat Keisha. I don’t want to pick on you too much in case you have a disability.
Do you a have a proof about the terrible effects of skim milk in humans ? I have several doubts about this theory Christine.
Hi Christine, thanks so much for commenting. I appreciate your input very much. My statement was made for the lay reader to understand, not a biochemist …. The basic idea is that if you don't get enough saturated fat in your diet, you will crave sugar/refined carbs so that your body has the basic building materials to synthesize saturated fats. Obviously, there are a number of intervening steps, the first one being digestion.
I had doubts about this article when i read it. Your giving people false information. First of all you said “No ups and downs in insulin when your diet has lots of wonderful saturated fat in it.” This is a big lie! Saturated fats make inslulin levels go down which causes diabetes. Skim milk still has sugar in it so you won’t gey low blood sugar from skim milk. You said ” Olympic athletes drank a bowlful of cream to give them strength and endurance before competition. Why? Because cream steadies blood sugar for an extended period of time.” Big lie again! Blood sugar has nothing to do with strength or endurance…Olypmpic athletes drank a bowlful of cream because of the all the carbs it has in it. Carbs are the bodys main source of energy: sugar on the other hand gives you a light burst of energy then a crush feeling. Its actually really simple the fat you eat gets stored in your fat cells THATS making you fat. Carbs dont make you fat. Carbs are used as energy and has many other very useful functions. Unused Carbs are turned in to FAT and stored in the body. This whole article is a big fat lie! Reducing the amount of fat in your diet (changing to skim milk) will help you lose weight. Simply FATS make you FAT! And pigs are not fat they are large animals. Farmers are paid for the leanness of the pork that is produced from their pigs, and therefore feed them an optimum diet to produce meat, not fat. High fat content pork can actually be rejected by the butcher or factory, and deducted from the income that the farmer receives. Thats why farmers feed pigs skim milk. Your whole article is WRONG! Dont go around calling your self and Economist if you dont know this simple stuff!
Kiesha, please expand upon your thesis that skim milk is good for you? Please provide as others including the author documentation that your theory is correct. Are you a factory dairy garner perhaps? Please explain why it is that statistics of diseases and obesity have fine nothing but sky rocket since the end of WWII when such things add low fat diets, fake sugars, fake fats, vegetable fats, etc have become the norm. Why is it that people returning to REAL FOOD diets are experiencing better over all health, than those eating processed low fat, low car, low everything diets? I suppose you ieve that aspartame/Nutrisweet is “GOOD” for you as well? Pull your head from the dark place its currently in please!
Please… Pardon the typos. Darn small phone, big fingers.
Cream has almost no carbohydrates. Look on the back of the container sometime. It is mostly saturated fat. It is an emulsion, which is partly why it whips up soooooooo goooooood with sugar and vanilla. MMMMMmmmmmmmm. That being said, Keisha, you are off your rocker with almost all of your information (see my above post on lipogenesis, go read a biochemistry book). Fats can be good for you – there are a form of long-term high-density energy storage (in addition to composing lipid bilayer membranes), as opposed to carbohydrates, which are used for quick bursts of energy and short-term, low-density energy storage. However, I do believe that the “Healthy Home Economist” could us a health helping of [citation needed] in her articles.
Cream has no carbs. I am an overweight type ii diabetic. I lose weight when I cut carbs. I eat the Paleo way, with no cheese, no milk, no grains. I am losing weight and feeling good for the first time in years.
Good for you Terry! keep it up. I did Paleo for a long time and I felt awesome.
Hi Sarah,
While I found your blog entry interesting, I did find an error that I want to correct so your readers are not misinformed.
You stated that "The body is able to MAKE saturated fat out of sugars, hence the sugar cravings that are impossible to control when you eat a lowfat diet that includes skim milk." This statement is not 100% correct. From a biochemical perspective, the body does not EVER make saturated fats from the foods we ingest, because if this were true we would all be at risk (or have) heart disease! The human body DOES create fats, in the form of TRIGLYCERIDES, when we overconsume foods in the form of carbohydrates.
Christine Watson, RD, LDN
Registered Dietitian/Owner
Compassionate Nutritionist, LLC
http://CompassionateNutritionist.com
“From a biochemical perspective, the body does not EVER make saturated fats from the foods we ingest, because if this were true we would all be at risk (or have) heart disease!”
What biochemical perspective would that be, Christine? What evidence do you have that saturated fat causes heart disease? Better make sure it’s really good evidence and that it’s actually pointing to the saturated fat and not possibly to other, confounding elements of the person’s diet such as an over-reliance on refined carbohydrates.
And yes, the body does make triglycerides. But if you’re making them from carbohydrates rather than simply breaking down fats you eat, that means your insulin is also elevated, which means those triglycerides are going to go straight to your fat cells. And, well, last I checked? The fat in my fat cells is pretty darned saturated.
I think it’s interesting, since putting more saturated fat into my diet, that fats and animal fats in particular almost taste sweet. It makes me wonder if we get sugar cravings when there’s not enough fat because our bodies are begging us to eat more fat and the sugar is the closest approximation to fat-flavor that we’d get. No idea, just a guess.
I had doubts about this article when i read it. Your giving people false information. First of all you said “No ups and downs in insulin when your diet has lots of wonderful saturated fat in it.” This is a big lie! Saturated fats make inslulin levels go down which causes diabetes. Skim milk still has sugar in it so you won’t gey low blood sugar from skim milk. You said ” Olympic athletes drank a bowlful of cream to give them strength and endurance before competition. Why? Because cream steadies blood sugar for an extended period of time.” Big lie again! Blood sugar has nothing to do with strength or endurance…Olypmpic athletes drank a bowlful of cream because of the all the carbs it has in it. Carbs are the bodys main source of energy: sugar on the other hand gives you a light burst of energy then a crush feeling. Its actually really simple the fat you eat gets stored in your fat cells THATS making you fat. Carbs dont make you fat. Carbs are used as energy and has many other very useful functions. Unused Carbs are turned in to FAT and stored in the body. This whole article is a big fat lie! Reducing the amount of fat in your diet (changing to skim milk) will help you lose weight. Simply FATS make you FAT! And pigs are not fat they are large animals. Farmers are paid for the leanness of the pork that is produced from their pigs, and therefore feed them an optimum diet to produce meat, not fat. High fat content pork can actually be rejected by the butcher or factory, and deducted from the income that the farmer receives. Thats why farmers feed pigs skim milk. If you believe this your as ignornant as the person who wrote this article.
lol! wow.. you are so so wrong dear.. and how many carbs are in milk fat??
Keisha it’s clear you are not well educated in this matter.
1. Insulin does not simply ‘drop’ when you consume fat. Insulin is released when blood glucose increases. Fat stabilises blood glucose and therefore insulin spikes do not occur. When you consume a meal high in sugar (including ‘carbs’- which break down to sugar), insulin is released. It is in fact this repeated biochemical pathway that can lead to insulin resistance ie Type 2 Diabetes, NOT consuming FAT. In fact having some good fat with your meal will actually prevent repeated insulin spikes.
2. Do you really think blood sugar has nothing to do with strength and endurance?! What happens if someone’s blood sugar is too low? Lethargy, weakness in arm and leg muscles are just two documented examples… As Sarah has explained cream has been beneficial to athletes because all the fat helps stabilise blood sugar, preventing the above symptoms..
Lastly Keisha, have you not seen bacon before…? I wouldn’t consider this as ‘lean meat’ as you have described it.
I don’t want to come off rude, but you’re wrong on so many levels.
Cream has no carbs in it…
Ohhhhh Keisha… you need to do some serious investigating on your own, don’t just believe what your spoon fed by you mainstream education.
Fat makes you fat only in the presence of carbs.
carbs are the cause of all disease.
When i put clients on a diet 90% fat they dropped weight at a starvation pace.
Do more research the usda is trying to kill you
What’s frustrating from all of you is that there is zero, true scientific research to support any claims that you all are making. You have such a great chance to really educate here and you fail to show you are well-versed in speaking anything “scientific.” Don’t assume everyone on these sites are part of the low-information crowd. This is a topic I would greatly like to get a settled verdict over, but no one is saying anything (logical or not) that anyone can trust. Please give us true scientific evidence that what you are saying is true (that skim milk is healthier or whole milk is healthier), and please do not list any “.com”websites as they are not true sources.
You need to get biochemistry lessons to know what you are talking about. Insulin is not needed to get your trigs to go into the cell! My biochem prof would freak out if she reads your post. Although, i do agree that as long as you eat within your alloted caloric requirement per day then a few sat fats will not matter. Balanced meal is the key. If you eat a fatty meal (fried) low fat milk can balance it out. Veggies, fruits, carbs, protein, fat. We need it all.
NZ ministry of health has ordered low-fat milk be consumed by children over 2 years to prevent obesity and heart-disease. Milk in schools program uses low-fat so I looked at figures. Whole milk 4.8g sugars/carbs, low-fat 5.0g, and Calci-trim 5.2g so they take out the fat energy and increase energy from sugars and carbs. That’s interesting which is more fattening? Does fat energy make you obese and block the arteries or is it sugars? Look at corn-fed chickens they are much more fatty than a normal chicken.
It’s patently obvious that the root cause of the present severe obesity epidemic lies with low-fat, high carbohydrate diets. Obesity rate in Britain in 1972 was only 2 per cent. When low-fat diets were advised in 1983 obesity surged to such a point that the average between the sexes is now at 27 per cent!
The fat that is accumulate in your body it is saturated fat, all mammals accumulate saturated fat in his body and we humans are mammals.
When you are overweigth and start a diet, with a caloric deficit and with low fat foods, you still are consuming a lot of saturated fat, since your body under a caloric deficit enter in starvation mode and start releasing saturated fat to feed your basic body funtions, this really make sense and logic and is very well explained by Richard Nicoley here http://freetheanimal.com/2008/12/all-diets-are-high-fat-diets.html
From a biochemical perspective? Go back and take biochemistry again. See lipogenesis. All forms of energy in the body are essentially interchangeable (fats/sugars/proteins) with a few exceptions (for example, we don’t synthesize some amino acids; we must obtain them through diet) and are regulated by supply and demand systems mitigated by enzyme kinetics and substrate concentrations.
Hi Meagan, yes, the gallbladder can kind of shrivel away if it isn't used from years of lowfat eating. Folks who are waking up to the insanity of lowfat diet have to frequently go slow with increasing the saturated fat so as to give the gall bladder time to adjust.
I may be able to post my diet at some point, not sure if I can squeeze in writing a food journal in addition to my other duties at the moment. Will keep that in mind though, as it is really a great idea. In the meantime, I know that there is an article on the WAPF website that details what each of the WAPF Board Members ate individually for 3 straight days. I did a quick look and couldn't find it right away, but I know it is there somewhere (www.westonaprice.org)
Hi Sarah, I had my gall bladder removed after pregnancy at age 25 because of a LACK of fats 🙂
Anyway, my question… I know it would take a lot of note taking, but is there anyway that you write up a week's worth (or several days) of your diet? I know that it would vary from week to week but I think it would provide a lot of insight and inspiration to your readers.
If you have had your gall bladder out and simply cannot drink whole milk due to an inability to digest fats, make sure you get raw skim milk from a local dairy farm which will not have any oxidized cholesterol added in the form of skim milk powder.
Sounds like you are swallowing what medical doctors are telling you to me. When you alter something from it’s original state you are bound to have problems. If you were unable to digest fats you would be dead there are fats in all animal products no matter how they have been altered. I would see what a real doctor, such as Dr. Mercola has to say about what you can and can not eat now.
For anyone reading this for the first time, be sure to see the latest group of studies proving again that low-fat and non-fat milk makes you fat but whole does not:
https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/new-study-lowfat-and-skim-milk-drinking-kids-are-fattest/
Full-fat dairy is much healthier than low-fat or skim milk because our bodies require the full amount of fat in milk to absorb the fat-soluble nutrients it contains.
Hi Sarah, we consume 2% (reduced fat milk) that good enough to diminish sugar cravings right?