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 live in a rather affluent area. It’s probably a form of snooping, but I love to glance inside the carts of the other shoppers at our local grocery store. 9x out of 10, the 2 most consistent items in the carts of the heaviest shoppers are Skim Milk and Diet Coke. This is followed by various processed diet foods. The most common items in skinny people’s carts? Fruits and vegetables. Go figure.
Isn’t whole milk a whole food! Isn’t a complete egg a whole food? What is so hard about understanding whole foods? It’s about marketing & selling to the public.
Surprised no one has mentioned the CLA’s- my favorite part of milk/dairy fat. Medium chain triglycerides! Studies show they actually can help speed up your metabolism. Milk fat is better for you in more ways than one. YAY! Whole milk for me and extra creamy and grass-fed if I can find it.
Not surprised
The sad part is that those receiving WIC are now banned from whole milk! As of October, 1 percent or skim only for kids over 3.
My foster kids are on WIC. Before we got their WIC coupons, they were drinking the same whole milk that my son and I (both considered “skinny”) drink. Between the two kids, they get a total of 6 GALLONS of 1% or 1/2% milk each month. We just got back from their re-certification appointment – where I asked about at least getting 2%. NOPE. Feds won’t allow it and apparently the studies show that giving children the reduced fat milk is working. Ummmm……
BUT I don’t have to buy it. I can use the coupons for other things and continue offering the kids the milk that the rest of the household drinks.
Going from whole milk to the 1 gallon of 1% I did buy for them with the WIC, I definitely saw other food cravings increase. Went back to whole milk for 2 days – away go the cravings and they are back to eating more fruits and veggies without complaint or question.
Interesting.
I have been so aggravated lately by our state health dept. I keep seeing all these commercials aimed at children trying to convince them to drink low fat or skim milk! I just want to scream! Why don’t they spend more time talking about NOT eating processed junk and make it more difficult for people to buy junk food with the EBT cards? That would be smarter than brainwashing kids into believing that skim or low fat milk is better for them. AND for those people who get EBT cards and say that the state or gov’t shouldn’t be telling them what they can or can’t buy with it…that is state and/or fed money. It’s gov’t assistance, tax payer money. So yes, there should be limits on what can be purchased with it.
“AND for those people who get EBT cards and say that the state or gov’t shouldn’t be telling them what they can or can’t buy with it…that is state and/or fed money. It’s gov’t assistance, tax payer money. So yes, there should be limits on what can be purchased with it.”
The way you capitalize “AND” at the beginning of this sentence indicates emphasis, and your determiner choice of “those” indicates that you clearly do not see yourself as someone who “gets” EBT. – Cool! I hope you never need government assistance. If in the unfortunate event that you do ever need transitional help, I hope that you’ll bring your sound nutrition sense and scream for your rights to purchase foods which will help you be healthy.
Some people fall on hard times; EVERYONE pays taxes. To say that we have no right to govern our food intake because the government is paying the bill is discounting that very right and privilege we have to be living in a republic. One nation – for the people – by the people.
There are some great incentive programs that are starting to pop up, however, they are regulated at the state level and not widely adopted. THESE are the things that citizens should be screaming about… not more regulations.
I read a sign recently announcing that mother’s and children over 2 on WIC would no longer have access to whole milk, only 1% or skim. Only children under the age of 2 could have whole milk.
The only thing I could think was “Oh great, they took an already inferior product and just told everyone they can only use the even crappier version of it, this will really reduce obesity, especially when combined with highly processed cereals….”
Unfortunately as long as there is a customer base it will continue to be sold. We can only make our own choices of what’s best for ourselves and our families. I’m just glad that there is a local co-op where I can buy raw milk.
Even my pediatrician freaks out when I day we drink whole milk! It’s nuts!
I believe the skim milk powder…because when I have bought a gallon and frozen it in the past there is always sediment in the bottom when I go to thaw. In the last year I stopped buying skim for my kid and went straight to whole milk. No problems!