New York City schools have decided to stop offering whole milk to students. When will people finally see that bureaucracy and food do not belong together? Without getting insane about the many completely stupid and self-serving half-truths bureaucrats have turned into policy on food, like those regarding mishandling of raw milk and beef preparation. Things like: cooking the flavor (some say helpful microbes) out of the milk by pasteurizing it, and spraying the freshly butchered carcasses of animals with bleach. The truth is if people responsible for these decisions had any understanding about food and its benefits, their policies would involve insuring the handlers of our food did so in safe manners, rather than rashly deciding to sterilize the good, the bad, and the flavor out of our food supply.
Taking as a given that those who decide food policies are inept reactionaries who have, without fail, followed trends and made decisions based on simplicity over quality, those of us who care have found ways around their idiocy. But this decision by New York schools is potentially dangerous to children and that is unacceptable.
I will not get involved in the arguments for drinking whole milk they are well made here. Or the fact that raw whole milk, properly handled, is probably the healthiest thing humans can consume (because Ron Schmid does a great job of it in his book and, to be honest, I drink it because it tastes better, not because I believe it has medicinal powers). The dilemma of this recent decision is that it shows a complete miscomprehension of the issues facing America's youth today.
I assume the impetus for this decision is the improvement of health of the children (to be against being fat is an aesthetic choice, there are plenty of people out there who like being large and like others that are large, so for a school board to decide being fatter is bad would be horrible and would border on eugenics.) I think it is safe to assume they have made this new policy believing it will aid in the fight against type two diabetes and coronary issues later in life.
There is good evidence that Americans are getting fatter, and fatter Americans are suffering from ill health as a result of their weight. There is, however, no direct provable relationship between animal fats and ill health. To the contrary, as Americans have cut back on consumption of animal fats, they weigh more and more every year. I will let dieticians argue that as America reacted to the idea that animal fats were bad, the food industry replaced animal fat with vegetable fat and empty sugar calories, and we are now finally realizing things like people who substitute artificial sweeteners and "low-fat" fillers are fatter then those who don't.
I think people who try to stay informed rather than gleaning their health info from TV commercials and the side of a Snackwell's box all agree at this point that two things are responsible for America's fat issue: one being the departments of American government advising an out-of-balance diet that favors grains and carbohydrates, and the other the ubiquitous-ness of high fructose corn syrup in packaged food.
Ok, so the New York school system is basing a very poor decision on old dietary theory that most everyone who actually studies health gave up on about ten years ago, things like this happen all the time. So why am I so up in arms about this one, this time? Because the real problem with America's diet is sugars and, in the interest of saving 20 calories, this new policy keeps low-fat chocolate milk available while removing whole milk. The result is that, in the interest of saving less then 1% of a grown human's suggested diet, children are being trained to prefer artificially sweet food.
The most immediate dietary dilemma facing Americans is the amount of processed sugar in their diets and the New York School system is encouraging sweet over wholesome in the interest of saving twenty calories.
The truth is, if you want healthier kids, encourage them to eat a balanced diet of comprised of the least processed food possible and take them out for a run. Obsessing on fat has made us fat. Obsessing on sugar has created artificial sweeteners that at there best are negligibly carcinogenic at their worst make you dumb. According to the numbers of schools that have enacted these policies milk drinking is down across the board, and no drink can be more important to a developing child then milk. To accept people drinking less because it will take 20 calories out of a developing child's diet only leaves us with brittle children who crave sweet beverages, and that is a horrible education.
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