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 highly doubt the first heart attack was in the 1900s. I would venture to guess there was no way of detecting it prior to then. Also. Dairy in general isn’t good for you. Read The China Study. Don’t you know it’s illegal to make health claims on a blog? Sounds like you have much more research to do.
The heart attack thing has been covered. There are different kinds of heart attacks. The author claims that the kind of heart attack resulting from clogged arteries is what didn’t show up until the 1900s.
Additionally, she isn’t making health claims on a blog. She’s commenting on research. This stuff HAS been researched, she just didn’t link to it. It’s not difficult to go to Google Scholar and search, so perhaps you should do your research before claiming that someone else needs to do their’s?
To end, she’s also not saying that dairy is the best thing since sliced bread. Dairy in general might not be the greatest thing for you, BUT if you’re gonna drink it, drink it whole and raw, not skim and overprocessed. People think that skim is better for you because it’s lower in fat and it’s touted as a health food. All the author is saying is that that isn’t true and that raw whole is better for you than skim.
This seems very logical, but I fit into a loophole which throws all of this logic to hell. Whatever the causes, I had some rather severe health problems in the past which included severe acute pancreatitis. I have had 2/3 of my pancrease removed, as well as my gall bladder, and my spleen.
I need to reduce my fat intake to less than 50 grams a day or I get very ill. But the lack of a full pancreas also means I have to dramatically reduce my sugar intake since I am a surgically induced diabetic who has to take insulin. I want my lattes, but if I have them with whole milk it’s actually likely to make me feel ill.
How do I take the facts presented to find a diet which will work well for me?
I think the overarching theme is avoiding processed foods. Want a latte? Buy your own latte maker and use raw milk. I’ve heard that there is raw skim milk, but I don’t know if it’s oxidized. And, I mean…skim has more sugar than whole, generally speaking, so you’re making a trade-off here. What you’ll have to do is treat things like lattes as a special thing. Days you have lattes, you keep an extra eye on your fat and sugar intake. You gotta make room for it in your diet. But it can be done.
I don’t think you’ll FIND a diet that will work perfectly for you…no one really does. You just have to find one that will work alright, and tailor it. I’d start with avoiding over-processed foods.
Definitely switching to whole milk as soon as I can…however, we’ve been using lactose-free milk for some time (never diagnosed with anything but must have suspected at sometime it was a problem for us)…so, I’m now wondering if there’s a problem with drinking the lactose-free kind but in the whole milk instead of skim….or, are there reasons why we should try switching back to regular whole milk again?
everyone should remember that beverages do not have the same satiating effects that solid food has. drinking your calories is drinking your calories, whether its coca-cola or skim milk. there are so many great non-dairy milks that are fortified with the necessary vitamins and minerals, without all of the animal fats and proteins. (i said proteins, not protein in general). Also, a lot of you seem to believe n-of-one, first person accounts are proof of something. n-of-100 studies don’t prove anything. you need an enormous study size with well controlled parameters before scientific claims about ANYTHING can be made.
What about skim raw milk? Is that also not good if a person is ingesting other healthy fats?
I drink raw whole milk, now. I grew up believing only in pasteurized homogenized milk would be safe. I just never drank milk, hated it. Now that I’ve been reintroduced to milk, and actually love it I’m being told that in order to be healthy I should still get skim milk.
Is there any data on that?
What about Raw Skim milk? My daughters hate cream in their milk but we wanted to try Raw milk to help with one’s lactose intolerance. Organic Pastures makes a Raw skim milk, but is it also oxidized in the same manner you discuss?
Also, in your aggressive publicity against vegetarians, you don’t address those who are absolutely disgusted by meat and eating blood (cooked or not). The thought of eating animal carcass turns my stomach, yet you claim one cannot be healthy without eating things like stock made from animal bones–that’s so disgusting to me! Even if the animals were grass fed and sustainably raised, which I do, in fact, believe is the only ethical way to eat meat, I could never cook such things let alone eat them. Do you have no suggestions for those who cannot stomach meat? If so, I fear you’ll never convert a good many of us vegetarians.
Hi Sarah,
I agree with you that saturated fats sometimes get a bad rap. Together with the right ratios of monounsaturated fats, Omega 3s, and Omegas they can be perfectly healthy.
I don’t agree with your assumption that skim milk will vastly raise blood sugar over whole milk. I’ve checked the glycemic indexes of both and they’re both extremely low: skim @ 32 and whole @ 27; compare with a potato @ 85. Yes, fat does slow absorption of nutrients– and hence in theory absorption of lactase– but it doesn’t really seem like enough to make a difference. Here’s the GI listings from the University of Wisconsin:
As for saturated fat contributing to elevated cholesterol that’s another story. I feel cholesterol is a little over exaggerated as a risk factor; it’s the more underlying inflammation that oxidizes LDL, hence damage to arterial walls and artheriosclerosis.