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
wow, is all I can really say. I weighed 330 lbs a little over a year ago drank whole milk, but made lots of bad choices. I now drink skim milk and weigh 230lbs. I still have a ways to go. I drink a lot of milk and I have eaten the same thing other than changed out the skim milk and whole milk from time to time and checked my blood sugar at the same time as well as eating at the same time… my blood sugar was higher after drinking the whole milk, explain that.
Your blood sugar was higher because you weighed 100 lbs more. Losing 100 lbs will dramatically lower your insulin resistance. While you have made great progress so far (congratulations, by the way, your achievement is awesome), it will be extremely difficult to get to a normal weight from 230 lbs maintain it long term drinking skim milk.
Sarah this is a very good point. I myself have been around a health weight my whole life, however could never loose those last 10 kilos following a low fat diet. In addition I was always hungry and did not enjoy the diet i was on..
A year ago after doing much research (I myself am a molecular biologist and realise this makes so much sense!), I am now longer afraid of good fats (coconut oil, whole milk, butter etc), and simply avoid anything processed. I have lost the 10 kilos finally..
I am 163 cm tall and now 55kg. Best of all I can finally just enjoy food 🙂 Honestly it’s the best thing I have ever done. You can’t susatin a low fat diet. If weight is an issue (and I know everyone is different!) I would highly recomment increasing your good fats and reducing your grains!
Good luck 🙂
Your blood sugar was higher because you weighed more. As you lost weight, your glucose levels went down, correspondingly.
Great article in the LA Times about how excess carbs in the diet is the real culprit and NOT FAT:
http://dev.www.jsonline.com/features/food/106929473.html
An article for making your own butter and other kitchen staples – so simple!
To Stacey above…unfortunately organic milk is ultra-pasteurized. Just something to think about.
Hi Rebecca, feel free to share this article on your blog. I am happy for this information to get out to as many people as possible. People need to know this as too many folks are suffering and discouraged from following the lowfat way of eating promoted by the ridiculous USDA food pyramid and most conventional doctors and nutritionists. Its high time for a revolt against lowfat eating because it doesn’t work and just makes people fat.
I also would like to share this on my blog (http://rhauptman.posterous.com) if you wouldn’t mind. And I will be passing on this link to my Facebook fans!!
I LOVE raw milk, and am sad that I don’t have access to it anymore. From Guernsey cows, grassfed, no hormones or antibiotics. That was the most delicious food ever.
Im glad I read this information, Im going to look into this further. Good to read everyones comments as well. I have stopped using artificial sweetners, and try to buy products with whole ingredients, less man made. But never really stopped to think about my milk products, including yogurts, cheese etc.. thanks for the insight.
Jill C, what a moving testimonial! I hope those who read your story here will hopefully be encouraged to stop the dieting and calorie cutting and lowfat nonsense (which NEVER works long term as you have discovered) and embrace whole fat foods once again. Once the body is nourished with these life giving fats it can finally do as yours has done .. come off starvation mode and drop some weight.
Stacey, I would be honored if you shared this post on your blog. Thanks for asking!
Thanks so much for this post! I would like to share it on my blog, with your permission. I just switched us over to whole milk, and just yesterday I bought Organic whole milk. It is illegal to sell raw milk here, so that won’t be an option, but the Organic milk is from a local farm, so I think I’m doing pretty good that way 🙂
How does this work? I have heard in many places it is illegal to sell raw milk. Does have a “share” in a cow constitute selling milk?
I am more and more intrigued, and am now wondering if my weight gain in college had as much to do with introducing skim milk regularly and the “low fat” options, as what most people call the freshman 15. I was working out and didn’t really eat any worse than I did as a teenager at home.
Thank you for this real information. I will continue to check back and keep reading.
I just bought raw, whole milk for the first tome this week and I actually had to fill out an “application” to do so. It was a waiver stating that the gov’t doesn’t think raw milk is a good idea and that I could hold no one responsible if it made me sick. The woman at the store said it was a gov’t requirement.
Thanks for this – I am a 42 yo woman and I have struggled with my weight, and a variety of other hormone-related and other health problems since I have been an adult. In fact, in my entire life, I have never been able to lose a single ounce. I would gain weight, in large amounts during or after traumatic life events, such as having a baby, a severe illness, or a death in the family, but otherwise my weight would remain stable. When I gained weight, I would be a lot of weight, very quickly, such as after my third child was born, when I gained 25 lbs in 3 months while breastfeeding a 10.5 lb newborn a dozen times a day. I could not understand it, and no conventional methods of weight loss worked – I would only become physically ill, so fatigued I could not function, and not lose any weight, only to gain a whole bunch more weight once I got tired of feeling horrible.
Slowly, I have made dietary and attitude changes that have improved my health. We switched from margarine to butter, from lowfat milk to whole, I started eating more eggs, seeing my chiropractor regularly, exercising regularly (this was actually more a result of having improved health – when I was sick, I was too sick and fatigued to exercise – it would exhaust me, and I could not build muscle), and learning about my food allergies and avoiding those foods. About three months ago, I finally found a source for raw grass-fed milk in my area and started buying it. Besides being delicious, I have now, for the first time in my life begun losing weight. I have lost about 7 lbs so far, without trying or making any other changes. In addition, my cycle has regulated and I no longer need to nap every day. I wish I had known years ago. Maybe if I hadn’t been a product of the 80s low-fat movement, I wouldn’t have ever had these health problems. I find that the more fat I eat, the better I feel – the main problem is finding fat. I eat bacon, eggs and whole, raw milk every morning for breakfast and feel great all day!
Hi Chemist, I HAVE done my research and all I have said is correct. Saturated fats ARE HEALTHY .. got my research is from one of the foremost fat researchers and chemists in the world, Dr. Mary Enig Phd of the Weston A. Price Foundation. As for the heart attacks did not occur before 1927 … of course there were OTHER types of heart attacks as you suggest, just not artherosclerosis. I have confirmed this as well – folks just choose not to believe it as heart disease is so common most such as yourself can’t fathom a time less than 100 years ago when it basically did not exist. My own Father started medical school in 1949 and was told not to go into cardiology as “there was no money in it”!! Even then, there weren’t many clogged artery type of heart attacks as partially hydrogenated fats had not gotten so endemic into the food supply yet.