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 wasn’t alive in the 20’s when everything was “drowned” in cream and butter, but it doesn’t sound very good for you. If people were thinner back then they must’ve eaten much smaller portions of that buttery cream-covered cheese ball we’re talking about, which is probably the case. My opinion is that the problem with our diet today is that we still eat all that fat, but also have all the carbs to go with it. It’s been a while since I ordered a cheeseburger without a bun and some fries on the side…and I’d probably want a beer to go with it. I buy whole, low fat, or nonfat milk, and I’m still going to pour it into a bowl full of high-carb cereal and eat it.
If whole milk completely cured people of their cravings for bread, potatoes, and corn syrup, I agree that everyone would be skinnier and probably pretty healthy. But some people might read this, switch to whole milk, and then unknowingly return to their foot long sandwich that came with chips and a 20oz soda, thinking they’ve turned a new leaf.
In an “either/or” situation, the benefits of fats do outweigh those of carbs and should come first when considering a healthy diet. Your writing corroborates that. Unfortunately, the average American has ready access to a multitude of fat sources, including milk, as well as an abundance of quick carbs. With all the other fatty foods we regularly consume, along with all the carbs we’re bound to run into, do you still think there is zero benefit to reducing some fats from our diet when given an option like skim milk?
Sometime last year I had saw a post on Pinterest about stretching the grocery dollar. One of the tips was to buy whole milk and cut it with water to make “skim” (which was really more like making it 1-2%.) Regardless, I noticed it tasted better and I didn’t feel awful after drinking it. This prompted me do some research. Everything I have read corresponds to what you have laid out here.
Once I removed no- and low-fat foods from my diet, my body has been changing; for the better! I think some people don’t realize, if they remove something, they must put something in its place and it is generally salts or chemicals. So, thank you for this article and bringing these facts to the attention of others.
*Had seen a post. (So much for proofreading)
An interesting article to be sure. Admittedly, I am a bit skeptical, mostly because diabetes and heart issues run in my family and I certainly don’t want to contribute any health issues I may already be prone to. At any rate, I kind of did my own unscientific study. I normally eat a rather high carb breakfast, either whole grain homemade toast and an egg scrambled in a vegetable based spread. Usually, I’m feeling pretty run down and tired not long after eating. I recently began using real butter and after cooking some of eggs from my own hens in it, could not believe the taste difference. WOW. So for about a week I ate three small(bantam size) eggs scrambled in about a tbsp of butter and either a few slices of pork bacon or a bit of smoked sausage, sometimes a little wheat toast too. Sounds like a huge meal, and maybe it was, but I figured it was fuel for the day. Honestly, I really didn’t feel the need to snack all day, I did not crave the sugary things I normally do like cookies and a bite of candy every now and then, and I was pretty satiated until supper time. Now that I’ve gone back to my previous morning routine, I can tell a HUGE difference- tiredness, craving the sweets, no energy that lasts long at all, and overall just a very unsatisfied feeling. Now I have no idea what my blood glucose levels were before/after, or cholesterol, or blood pressure, or any of that. Perhaps I will do the experiment again and at record that data. Anyway, just wanted to thank you for the interesting read!
You are headed in the right direction, though when diabetes and heart disease are there it is even MORE important to change from a high carb/low fat diet to a high fat/low carb diet, it will save your LIFE. I am a type 1 diabetic and made the switch back in february, and it has done WONDERS for my diabetes care. I need half the insulin, and my sugars are down from 350-450range down to below 150! My doctor is VERY impressed, and agrees that a low carb lifestyle is great for diabetics. Diabetes itself lends to heart disease, so if you can get control of that part, the rest will follow. SKIP the toast, and keep your breakfast as is, likely what is happening with your standard high carb breakfast is your sugar is going through the roof and then crashing, leading to that groggy, thick feeling.. i felt it every day of my life when on the standard ADA recommended “diabetic diet” which is LOADED with carbs (how else will they sell so much insulin???)
I read this with a scowled look of puzzlement. Where is your evidence. Usually an argument is evidence based is it not? Instead you rant on as if fatty foods are a beloved member of your family slated by the world and must be protected at all costs. The last time I checked pigs are ideally full of meat not full of fat. We are not talking foie gras here. Olympic athletes of old did not enter the event of sitting in an arm chair in front of a TV for 13 hours after downing a bowl full of cream. Americans are fat not because of butter and milk, but because they are lazy and eat too much without exercise. So therefore an inactive person will. E better off eating fat free than a block of lard. The whole blog is just pathetic. It’s the same bull as those who say man didn’t land on the moon and Lincoln was a racist. Your next blog should be about bloggers who just blog any old bollocks
You make a good point that the examples given do not apply to the diet and lifestyle of humans today. We are in a food surplus and obesity is a serious issue that leads to other chronic diseases. Excess calorie intake and physical inactivity are the issues we should pursue, not the theory that skim milk leads to obesity, which has not been proven in a randomized controlled trial.
This is beyond ridiculous. Skim milk doesn’t make you any more fat than whole milk does. You say k: “It is only when you eat lowfat that blood sugar issues such as diabetes and hypoglycemia tend to arise.”. Are you saying that low fat milk or other low fat products don’t have the sugars the body needs? Because I am pretty sure skim milk it has between 9-12 grams of carbs, coming from a certain sugar called LACTOSE made from glucose + galactose (a.k.a milk sugar). In many cases skim milk has even more carbs than regular milk. So if I’m right you are implying that skim milk for having less fat makes you crave more carbs? Nonesense since, as I already explained, milk in any form has plenty of carbs.
Even if what you said was right, and skim milk did make you crave more carbs, what would be making you fat then WOULDN´T BE THE MILK, it would be the extra carbs YOU are eating because YOU get controled by your cravings and can’t help but eating too many carbs. NOT THE MILK’S FAULT!
Honestly this article is so sad and full of lies, I wonder how fit or healthy you are considering what a poor poor food education you have. People PLEASE don’t listen to this woman who doesn’t have the slightest clue about anything.
*English is not my first language so I’m sorry if I make any mistakes.
that comment was directed at the blogger, not “thisisbullshit” user. my apologies for any confusion.