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
As for your claims about sugar cravings, there are many different kinds of fat you can consume that will provide necessary calories and energy– anything from omega 3 fish oil to coconut oil– that aren’t known to elevate serum cholesterol or contribute, even if’s only obliquely, to atherogenesis.
Oh yes, saturated fats are great!! Go out and eat big macs people; see how much weight you lose. smdh at this whole article..
Not talking about big macs Frank which are loaded with rancid vegetable oils (in the bread) and GMOS and soy which will indeed put on weight. Try BUTTER my friend and you will get it very quickly.
Yeah, because Bic Mac’s and grass-fed steak are the same. You know what else is on a Big Mac? about 40g of processed flour.
I was wondering if Organic Agave is the same as Agave Nectar?
Yep.
Ok…two things:
First; humans are the only mammal that still drinks milk into adulthood. All other lacating mammals teach their young what to eat, then wean them. In short, we don’t need milk.
Secondly; when is the last time you saw a fat person eating health food? People get fat from eating refined sugars and too much saturated fat. Even before high fructose corn syrup, there were fat people. Being plump was a sign of affluence because only the wealthy could afford cream, pastries, and frequent servings of red meat.
The “secret” to staying healthy is eating a variety of real foods that are as unprocessed as possible, and burning as many calories as you consume.
I did not see any links in this post to any research proving any of the claims being made. Despite any supporting evidence to the claims made in this post, when those who have commented on this post question the conclusions they are asked to provide research proving their point. I believe it is extremely important when making ANY claim about any food that you provide links to peer reviewed research to back up the claims you are making. There are a lot of nutrition myths circulating on the internet, none of which have any research to back up these claims.
If you are going to make claims make sure you provide references to the research that backs up those claims, provide links to research showing skim milk causes weight gain, research that shows saturated fat is not linked to heart disease and all of the other claims being made in this article. Do not merely provide a link to a special interest group that promotes a certain diet, provide legitimate links to actual peer reviewed research.
OMG! I had to read 11 or 12 paragraphs of CRAP to get to your point! This is the sign of a poor writer. You finally made you point in the last paragraph. Your point (eating less fat will make you crave and consume more sugar) could have been said in one sentence.
I followed a low calorie, low saturated fat, high fiber, high protein, whole grain diet. It’s okay to crave carbs if they are from whole grains. The group of people who you are referring to (those who would get fat from eating carbs) usually eat a lot of refined, processed simple carbs. YOU SHOULD HAVE POINTED THIS OUT. I eat tons of 100% whole grain bread, whole grain pasta, brown rice, beef (90% lean), lean steak ect ect. The key is low fat and low refined processed carbs. Getting your carbs from whole grains is good for your heart, cholesterol levels and provides much more satiety. My cholesterol dropped 90 points on my diet with out drugs! I ate tons of lean meat, non-fat milk and whole grains.
I followed the reccomended low fat diet for decades going from impossibly thin and not able to gain weight to obese (BMI 30.4). Gained T2 and medicated. Told by MD to cut out the carbs. Researched his “ludicrious” advice and found the LCHF movement. Within weeks I lost weight and the reflux tablets I had taken for a decade. Then I cut out the BP, Metformin and statins within 5 months. Still losing weight and all markers of ill-health improving. Three and a haf years later I am 20 kgs lighter, unmedicated, cholesterol figures are a dream and maintain an HbA1c of 5.2. I purposely increased the fats- pork rind, coconut oil, butter, cream, cheese and now we also eat more eggs than ever so keep chooks in our back yard. In my thin days my grandparents ran an egg farm and made butter from cream and were never fat.
I cut the carbs from processed food and aim for around 30 gr a day from green veggies mostly. Still cannot use whole grains as they lift my BG above my self imposed limit of 6.0 mmol/L . I did have my gall-bladder removed at the end of my low fat decades but have no problem eating fats now. My doctor says that she no longer treats me as a diabetic because of my figures but I gently remind her that I could show her diabetic blood figures one hour after eating a slice of whole grain bread! I AM a diabetic but I choose to avoid the carbs which keeps me one happy, healthy 60 year old leading a very active lifestyle.
I give thanks for my health to Atkins and Bernstein and the lowcarb- high fat movement.
Amen sister. Fellow Diabetic LCHF convert, wouldnt be surprised if ive met you in the Diabetesforum heh.