Editor:
Consumer Reports is a national publication best known for helping consumers make informed choices for just about everything in the marketplace. In a recent article on making informed choices when purchasing milk, they made a shocking statement that should have made headlines but they included it in a rather bashful way at the end of the article. Simply calling them newer studies, they cited current research that indicates that the fats in milk are not associated with weight gain, type 2 diabetes or heart disease!
Now those of us who grew up on dairy farms and drank cows’ milk of whatever breed of cattle were part of our daily lives have been trying to get the truth out for our lifetimes. Milk and its products are healthful. You remember: strong bones and teeth.
A few decades back when researchers were attempting to associate anything with one’s health, some unscrupulous researcher took advantage of a part of the English language called a homonym. A homonym is when two words are spelled or pronounced alike but have different meanings. These less-than-honest researchers started making unsubstantiated claims that consuming fats would make you fat. It sounded reasonable and is accepted today as factual.
It just ain’t so.
Nina Teicholz in her 2014 book entitled “The Big Fat Surprise” concluded that we could eat butter, and drink whole milk as well as cheese for all of the same reasons mentioned in the Consumer Reports article. In short, dairy products should be an important part of our diets and we are fortunate to live in a time when milk, cheese and butter are plentiful.
Sincerely,
Jim Crawford
Retired Dairy Farmer
Minerva, Ohio
