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Got Milk? No!

L150214et's say you're married and have small children. Or, at least, growing children. On your weekly excursion to your favorite local supermarket to buy groceries, you pick up a couple of half gallons of milk. You don't drink it yourself because you were indoctrinated by your parents that drinking milk—whether whole milk, 2%, low-fat (1%) or fat free) is not healthy for adults—particularly whole milk. Adults, you know, are more prone to heart disease and heart attacks. If you don't believe me, ask your doctor. Particularly pediatricians. About the time the babies are weened, your pediatrician likely has already advised you that "high octane" milk (whole milk or, rather, milk with 3.5% fat content), is too rich for children and will contribute to childhood obesity. A 2013 long term University of Virginia study (published in the Archive of Diseases of Childhood) conducted by Drs. Mark DeBoer and Rebecca Schafer on 10,200 children between the ages of 2 and 4 conclusively established that skim milk (between 1% and 0% butter fat) is more likely to create overweight children than milk with 3.5% butter fat (referred to in the "cross-your-fingers-behind-your-back" retail trade as "whole milk")

It must be, you think, older children and adults who shouldn't drink whole milk. Because you know that ever since you were an adolescent, all of the "science" said that drinking whole milk was not healthy for...someone. Remember? Only it wasn't science. It was the advertising dollars spent by the princes of industry in cahoots with the barons of business. Thank a Fox News writer, Elena Ferreti for coining the phrase that explains why we mistakenly think drinking low fat or fat free milk is good for us. It's the "fat phobia that became a dietary axiom." But, we'll complete that circle in a few minutes.

The University of Virginia study mirrors a 2005 Harvard study that discovered that 1% milk caused greater weight gains in 9 to 14 year olds. What does that mean? It means an overwhelming preponderance of the evidence conclusively shows that "...the striking link between low-fat milk and obesity was present in every single racial ethnic group and every single social strata." The 2013 UVA study shows that skim milk actually makes children heavier than whole milk. DeBoer commented that "...drinking low-fat milk is like throwing out the baby with the bath water." Only, they aren't throwing out the "bath water."

The reason we've always been given for abstaining from 3.5% milk (referred to as "whole milk") is that it's packed with fat and will make our middles look like watermelon waists. Consider, on the other hand, scientific studies which shows that dairy fat is not a dietary demon and we have a real dilemma—like the scientific dilemma about global warming. One group of "scientists" claim that people and pollution cause global warming and cooling, and another group comprised primarily of astrophysicists who aren't social progressives who are in it for the money, claim that global warming is caused 99.9% by the solar cycles and 0.01% by pollution. Once we find the motive for the princes of industry and the barons of business promoting the myth that low-fat or no-fat milk is better for you than whole milk, then we'll see the "profit motive" and the real reason that millions of dollars of societal advertising has been run over the last 55 years to encourage American consumers to stop drinking whole milk and convert their families to 2%, 1% or 0% fat milk.

But, before I tell you the motive of the princes of industry and the barons of business, it's important to understand what you and your family are drinking when they drink 1% or 0% fat milk. And, it's also important to understand that if you strip 99% of the butter fat from milk or worse, remove all of it, what you have left is no longer milk. It's pretty much water. Try an experiment. You will need a 10 oz. glass, a measuring cup that measures by the ounce, and a half pint of private label coffee cream. It will be about 10.5% cream. You're ready for your experiment. Pour one ounce of cream into the measuring cup and add it to the 10 oz. glass. Then fill the glass with water. It's going to look like slightly murky water. But, It's 1% milk. Now, ask yourself what 0% butter fat milk would look like. Remove the ounce of butter fat from another 10 oz. glass and fill it full of water.

I expect you will respond with an "Ugh," and then argue that 1% milk you just created doesn't look like the 1% milk you buy at the store. That's because the 1% milk and fat-free milk you buy in a regular milk container in the supermarket contains powdered milk (which contains good, old-fashioned artery-hardening oxidized cholesterol). That what gives the "milk" that milk "mouth-feel." instead of an H2O "mouth-feel." The powdered milk makes skim milk or fat-free milk a processed vitamin-laced, additive-laden synthetic "beverage" (which can only loosely be described as "milk"). To make the milky beverage taste good, one of the compounds added to the milk-fat deprived liquid is sugar. Sugar is the toxic shortcut to obesity. And the social engineers have been blaming obesity on Big Macs and Super Gulps when the problem may well be 2%, 1% and milk-fat free, sugar-laden powdered milky drinks.

Yet, the Department of Agriculture and the American Heart Association which, apparently, has never done a chemical analysis on 2%, 1% and milk-fat free "milk," still recommend 2%, 1% and milky water. The American Academy of Pediatrics, which believes the garbage spewed by the highly politicized Department of Agriculture, tells mothers that their children (2 years of age and older) should only drink low-fat milk believing the bureaucrats and politicians who are in bed with the princes of industry and the barons of business would never lie to them about the healthfulness of milk waste. On top of that, on April 17, 2014 the Connecticut State legislature proposed a bill that would ban whole milk from daycare centers. The program, the State legislators said was designed to improve nutrition standards. Connecticut parents disagreed. Debra Boucher of West Hartford told WSFB-TV, Channel 2 News "...If I had an obese child as a parent, I would not give my child whole milk. But, I don't want the State legislation to decide for me." Connecticut Senate Bill 48 stipulated that daycare centers could provide whole milk to a child only if it is medically-required and documented by the child's medical provider.

Dr. Walter Willett, MD, Chairman of Nutrition at Harvard University's School of Public Health, one of the nation;s top nutritionalists, pioneered the concept of eating nutritionally good foods and avoiding bad food. Among the bad food was—you guessed it—whole milk and 2% milk. Asked by Fox News in an interview when science will begin to establish food policy in the United States, Willett said: "Hopefully we will get there with the 2015 dietary guidelines." Willett, however, was not certain that whole milk should be left on the kitchen table in anyone's home. He said he would need more evidence before he would be willing to put whole milk "...on the optimally healthy fat category—even if the milk is pasture-raised." It is important to understand that the milk from pasture-graised cows is the healthiest milk in the world, and is rich in Omega-3. The milk-fat in pasture-graised cows, while a saturated fat, raises your good cholesterol and lowers your bad cholesterol. The same is true of the steaks or roasts from pasture-graised beef cows. And, there is no added sugar (which is one of the causes of obesity) in whole milk. Just natural vitamins and Omega-3.

In 2006, the nation's largest school system—with over 1.1 million students, New York City's Dept.of Education, banned whole milk in 2006, and butter in 2008. The question which begs an answer is why do city, county, and State bureaucrats recommend and, when they can, leverage schools to do their bidding and jettison not only all whole milk products but 2% milk fat products as well. Again, the question is: why? We're getting there.

The Massachusetts Dept. of Health & Human Services recommended to its citizens that adults in the State eat two servings of low fat or fat free milk or other dairy products daily. About the same time, the USDA launched a website called ChooseMyPlate.gov which outlined what the government decided was the correct daily dose of milk products for Americans—low-fat or no-fat products. It should have raised a question. It should have raised a lot of questions. Unlike the War on Drugs, the War on Milk was an easier battle for government to wage because their public relations campaign sounded correct and it made sense that milk with 3.5% milk-fat would be more likely to cause obesity than milk with 1% or 0% milk-fat.

While the federal government is pushing hard to ban whole milk from the grocery shelves and your refrigerator at home, the America people are not ready to give up whole milk in favor of low-fat or no-fat milk that is made to look like real milk George Siemon, the CEO of farmer-owned Organic Valley said their sales on whole milk and butter is up over 10% and the sale of low-fat and no-fat products have dropped dramatically. Consumers don't like 1% and no-fat milk products.

The social progressive societal engineers, funded by the princes of industry and the barons of business have led the public relations campaign alleging that whole milk contributes heavily to obesity and heart disease. While this has been the talk in the United States for the past 40 years. However, in the Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care, Swedish researchers noted that middle-age men who consumed high-fat milk (4.5% or heavier) were significantly less likely to become obese compared to men who rarely if ever, consumed low-fat diary products.

Another study, published in the European Journal of Nutrition noted they have researched 16 observational studies which concluded that high-fat dairy products caused both obesity and heart disease. The reviewers found that the actual clinical evidence did not support the hypothesis of the dairy doomsayers. If anything, the researchers concluded, high-fat dairy products were associated with a lower risk of obesity. Greg Miller, the executive vice president of the National Dairy Council said "...we continue to see more and more data that the consumption of whole milk products are associated with reduced body fat."

Higher milk fat contains more nutritional "energy" than 2%, 1% or "no-fat" substances. Thus, low-fat milk drinkers will always absorb less milk fat. Then why are so many of them obese? Don't blame McDonald's. Low-fat or no-fat milk drinkers absorb less nutrition from milk. The milk, then, is less filling—and less appealing to your taste buds. To make low-fat and particularly no-fat drinks appetizing, large amounts of sugar-enriched powdered milk is added to the milky substance. Powdered fat and sugar. Low fat milk drinkers compensate for hungry bellies with carbohydrates while high-fat milk drinkers traditionally eat more protein. They are healthier. Now, McDonald's does factor in here because when you are protein-deprived, nothing satisfies like a juicy Big Mac or Quarter-pounder with cheese. Or, two or three of them. At 650 to 2,500 calories or more per meal, obesity isn't around the corner, it's around your waist. The burger aside, childhood obesity begins with the milk—and not whole milk. It begins with the milk with the least amount of milk-fat.

Now, let's look at the motive for eliminating high-fat milk and promoting low-fat or no-fat milk as healthy. It's profit. Financial profit. A lot of financial profit. Since we now know that high-fat milk is much better for both children and adults than low-fat or no-fat milky products, then why do children and adults drink low-fat or no-fat milk and suffer from obesity? Also, we need to be asking why so many State and federal agencies are advocating banning whole milk altogether.

I remember life as a child in the upper peninsula of Michigan, more years ago than I hate to remember. If you're a reader of this website, and have read any of the articles under "Two Cents Worth" on this blog, you know I'm about as old as Moses—or, at least at times, I feel like I am. But, I am old enough to remember when you went to the corner grocery (not a supermarket) because, in small towns, they didn't exist. That's where you bought your groceries and other staples that you get Krogers, Safeway or Walmart today. Milk, for most families, was delivered by a local dairy. You bought whole milk, cream, butter or ice cream. Or, you could buy them at your local grocer. It just wasn't as fresh as the milk, cream, or butter you bought from the dairy. What you couldn't buy was row after row of 2%, 1% or fat-free "milk."

Let's look a a brief modern history of milk in the United States. In 1856, Gail Borden, Jr. invented the process to condense whole milk and storing it for sale in a germ-free can. In 1863 Louis Pasteur developed a process to kill microorganisms in wine that eventually was used to pasteurize milk. The first pasteurization plant in the United States was built in 1891 at the Sheffield Farms Dairy in Bloomfield, New Jersey. In 1908 Chicago enacted the first law which mandated the pasteurization of milk.

The first glass milk bottle was patented in 1884 by Dr. Henry Thatcher. That was followed by the first waxed paper cartons in the 1950s. Prior to 1998 the FDA milk-fat standard for whole milk was a minimum of 3.25% milk-fat. Low-fat milk had to contain from 0.5%-2.0% milk-fat and skim-milk had to have less than 0.5% milk-fat. Beginning in 1998, the FDA required that milk with 2% milk-fat be called "reduced-fat milk" because it didn't meet the new definition of "low-fat." The creation of 2%, or reduced fat milk, occurred in the 1950s, followed by skim milk (1% low-fat) and 0% fat-free milk.

Now comes the surprise. I'll bet you thought dairy owners created 2% reduced fat milk, low-fat milk and fat-free milk because it's good for you. Right? Wrong. First, if you read this article to this point, you know low-fat or fat-free milk which requires the addition of processed dry milk to even have the consistency of milk, isn't good for you because it's one of the major contributors to obesity. Let's look at one large dairy producers, Beatrice Creamery Company which was founded in 1894 in Beatrice, Nebraska. The owners, William Bosworth and George Evertt Haskell bought the bankrupt creamery at a time when there was a shortage of cream from local farmers. At their start-up, Bosworth and Haskell bought the milk, eggs and butter they sold directly from the farmers, graded the products, and sold them to their grocery store clients.

Because of the Depression of 1893, Beatrice was not able to get enough butter from the farmers in Nebraska who were struggling financially, so they skimmed the milk they bought from the farmers and made their own butter. Once they skimmed all of the butter fat from the whole milk, they had two choices what to do with the remaining product. First, since there was no such thing as low-fat or skim milk in 1894, they either had to throw away the milk residue which was left after skimming or find a way to return the fat-free product back to the marketing mix.

Beatrice Creamery moved to Chicago in 1913. In 1930 Beatrice was producing 110,000,000 liters of milk and 10 million gallons of ice cream a year. In 1939 they bought their only competitor in Chicago, Blue Valley Creamery. That "buy" added 11 creameries from New York to South Dakota to the Beatrice family. In 1946 Beatrice Creamery changed its name to Beatrice Foods. In 1987 Beatrice Foods sold off its foreign holdings, and its domestic division was sold to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. In 1990 ConAgra Food acquired Beatrice. The milk industry in the United States is now owned by the princes of industry and its street profits are now in the hands of the barons of business.

From the time Beatrice assumed "influence control" of the milk industry of America they pondered how to profit from the milky residue that remained when the milk-fat was skimmed from the milk for butter and other dairy products instead of discarding it. If America's dairies could create a sellable product from the milk residue that was thrown away when all of the milk-fat was removed, they could increase their bottom line without increasing inventory costs. But how do you create a market for what amounted to colored water with no taste or nutritional value?

It was a simple marketing problem. Convert milk residue into a product that people will not only drink, but demand. Tough sell. What that means is that profits are paramount and nothing's off the table in the perennial search for an extra four or five percent at the end of the year. The power of money which controls the free press in America pretty much controls the opinions on Main Street America.

When you climb aboard the social media transit system on the information superhighway, wherever you look, you will find nothing but good things being said about the nutrition value of low-fat milk. Things like: "Unlike whole milk, low-fat milk contains significantly fewer fat grams..." (true statement). "This is good for people who are concerned about their current state of health because the fat found in milk is typically saturated. Saturated fat has been found to be linked to a variety of serious health conditions, including cardiovascular disease, stroke, and even some types of cancer..." (Not true and blatantly false.) Here's the truth. While Big Pharma and the social progressive societal engineers attribute every human malady, particularly cancer, on the bad eating habits of mankind, there is absolutely no concrete evidence that the protein or saturated fats in either red meat or dairy products cause heart disease or cancer.

Quite frankly, not being a research scientist, I would venture a guess that the biggest risk of cancer comes not from the food we eat but from the prescription drugs we pop like chocolate feeding a sweet tooth. I don't even think that the most dangerous fat in the land—polyunsaturated (or vegetable oil fat)—which is the leading food chain cause of plaque build-up in your arteries, causes cancer. What it causes is premature death from heart attacks triggered by clogged arteries Some of the most commonly-used lifesaving prescription drug have deadly side affects that impact only a small percentage of those using them. But, to those who get cancer or kidney or liver disease from the chemicals they consume on the orders of their doctors because the risk of cancer or organ failure is the lesser of two evils, when you ask the doctor why it happened to you when no one in your family ever had cancer, the doctor will likely vilify what you consume and blame red meat or the whole milk your drink for the cancer, the heart disease or the malady that befell your liver or kidneys.

Because of attempts by the social progressive left in Congress to float legislation that would ban or greatly restrict the sale of whole milk and whole milk products failed early in the Bush-43 years, in 2004 the FDA began a nationwide push to encourage low-fat white or chocolate milk consumption in schools and QSR retailers (quick service restaurants) like Wendy's and McDonald's. The QSRs jumped on the bandwagon and through DMI (Dairy Management, Inc.) which lobbies for America's farmers and collaborates with the leaders of the food service industry, quickly complied with the FDA request, selling both white and chocolate milk in resealable 8 oz. plastic bottles—to the tune of 5.2 million units per week (up from 690 thousand units per week when the QSRs sold milk in paper cartons).

The multifaceted Low-fat Milk Campaign was both a State and federal program that was launched during the Bush-41 years beginning in 1990-92, working to create a behavioral change that would switch consumers from whole milk to low-fat milk.

Whenever you get politicians and the princes of industry and barons of business working together for each other's common good you immediately know two things. First, money in the form of campaign contributions is changing hands. Second, all parties—except the end-users—involved in the profit-taking are being enriched. Those profiting most are the princes of industry (those who control the dairy industry on the wholesale end) and the barons of business (who own the distribution on the retail end) of the process.

When Beatrice Creamery, like the Blue Valley Creamery and every other dairy production company in the country that produced butter, buttermilk and other cream products from whole milk, harvested the milk-fat from the whole milk, what was left was usually thrown away. Fresh milk from the cow has a milk-fat content of 3.8% to 5.9% milk-fat. When the FDA was created, Congress established the "standards" for whole milk. Whole milk, by regulation, must contain a minimum of 3.25% to 3.5% milk fat.

Whole milk from Guernsey cows has the highest milk-fat content at 5.9%. Jersey cows are second with 4.6% milk-fat; Brown Swiss cows are third with 4.04% milk-fat; Ayrshire cows are fourth with 3.9% milk-fat and Holstein cows are last with 3.7%. However, since Holsteins produce more milk than any other breed of cow, they produce more milk-fat for dairies simply because they produce far more milk. Jersey cows produce the highest protein yield.

Before the creation of the FDA and before the princes of industry and the barons of banking and business discovered they could create whatever type of government they needed to accomplish their economic or political objectives by simply buying the candidates when they ran for office, the princes of industry and the barons of business were stuck with the rule of law. Government is a good tool to own. Particularly if the politicians in your pockets control the committees on the Hill that regulates your industry. And since, historically, the Democrats (who began to be funded by the communists in Europe and Asia in the early 1980s [a violation of the Constitution and a felony] because the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China were deathly afraid of President Ronald Reagan and wanted to make sure he was not re-elected in 1984) have controlled the US House of Representatives for all but twelve of the 82 years since the socialists took control of Congress through FDR in 1933. And, the social progressives controlled the US Senate for all but 17 years.

They had little trouble legalizing the bribes they received from the princes of industry and the barons of banking and business using smoke and mirrors to make it appear they were being scrutinized to make sure there were no quid pro quos attached to the "bribes." Remember this: if the donor can't profit from the donation, he doesn't contribute. Remember this, too. Whenever government sticks its nose in the private sector and creates regulations to benefit campaign donors under the guise of making your life better or your food safer, someone high up the ivory towers of governance was paid a pretty penny to do it. That's how politicians build campaign war chests with tens of millions of dollars in them. Contributing money to politicians needs to be a felony for the donor, the recipient and the bagman who totes the loot to the politician or his campaign treasurer. Likewise there should be no boxes to check on your income tax return which allow you to donate $3 of taxpayer money to a political candidate since that's still a bribe.

Meanwhile, back to the moo juice. When the federal government borrowed California's milk slogan, "Got Milk," and built a national milk nutrition campaign out of low-fat and no-fat milk, a lot of "someone's" in Congress got their campaign war chests filled by the dairy industry. With the USDA and the FDA promoting low-fat and no-fat milk as the healthy alternative to whole milk for children and, of course, diet-conscious adults, the dairy industry finally had a viable market for milk waste.

When the FDA created the minimums and maximum standards for whole milk at from 3.25% milk-fat to 3.5% milk-fat, making all dairy producers conform to that "standard," they gave the dairy industry anywhere from half percent or more to 1.5% milk-fat for use in butter or other dairy products without impacting the taste, texture or nutritional value of milk..

The dairy producer in 1934 had a choice. From a quart of whole milk, the farmer could sell that quart of whole milk, or a quart of buttermilk, or an equivalent amount of butter, heavy cream, light cream or ice cream—but not whole milk, heavy cream and butter at the same time. When the dairy ran out of the allocated milk-fat available for processing butter, they stopped making butter. And, when the milk-fat content of whole milk was skimmed to 3.25%, they had no more milk-fat from that lot to produce butter, heavy cream or even half-and-half. Since the real profit was in butter and heavy cream, the dairy producers needed to cut the milk-fat content in milk—which they could legally do during the Great Depression and beyond since they were not bound by law from selling 2% or 1% milk-fat products. It's just that very few people wanted to drink the watery milk byproduct.

In 1911 the US Bureau of Dairying and the US Bureau of Standards officially adopted a devise invented by Stephen Babcock, a University of Wisconsin agricultural organic chemist that accurately gauged the amount of milk-fat in samples of milk tested. A second test, the Gerber Method, was invented by Dr. Niklaus Gerber in Switzerland in 1891 and is still used throughout the world as the standard for determining the percentage of milk-fat in milk by the International Milk Federation even though, in the United States, the standard is the Babcock Test. But, neither test has stopped unscrupulous dairymen from skimming more milk-fat from the milk they sell to milk processors than allowed by regulation. Dairymen who process their own product could very likely get away with skimming an extra half to 1% milk-fat from their whole milk and adding a small amount of dry milk for body and claiming a higher fat content in their milk than actually exists since, in many cases, small dairies simply measure milk by volume weight and not the actual fat content.

While the USDA theoretically tests the content of milk protein, milk fats, and other dairy solids from every shipment to determine the component value of the dairy products, the reality is, the larger the dairy producer the less likely actual tests are done. The USDA is likely using average real herd and production data. The USDA appears to be estimating the aggregate fat and protein content of the herd being sampled based on the type of dairy cattle in the herd. (And, as noted above, while Jerseys and Guernseys have the highest fat content and Holsteins have the lowest, but most dairy cows in the United States are Holsteins, they have the highest fat and protein yields.)

However, levels of fat and protein within those herds vary based on the season of the year. A three year USDA study revealed that in the months of July and August both milk-fat and milk protein drop. As dairy cows age, the amounts of milk-fat and protein decline. So, as dairy herds age, their milk will always contain less milk-fat and milk protein. Which, of course, is what makes the Babcock Test and the Gerber Method more important than herd statistics when grading the quality of the milk-fat and protein in the milk going to market.

When you go into the dairy section of your local supermarket and reach for a container of low-fat or fat-free milk remember this: pasture-graised dairy cows (organic milk) contsin more Omega-3 and more naturally-occurring vitamin A and D than grain-fed cows that spend most of their lives shackled to a feeding trough. Over the past 50 when the agri-giants took over the dairy and meat-processing industry, they stopped graizing their herds and began feeding them—as well as chickens and farm-raised fish—on a diet of corn laced with vitamins and other chemical compounds that alter body-fat profiles in the meat that will eventually end up on your dinner table.

The closer to zero milk-fat in the liquid you pour on your corn flakes, the more you eliminate the nutrients that God intended to be in the milk you drink and the beef you eat. As noted above, when you drink milk or eat the meat from grass-fed cows you get more healthy cholesterol and less bad cholesterol. When you drink 1% or fat-free milk, you get to drink a highly processed, sugar and synthetic additive-laden "beverage" that looks like milk, has the "mouth feel" of milk but isn't really milk. So, let me ask you the California question: "Got Milk?" What do you think?

 

 

 

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