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US dairy consumption patterns
“have shifted away from plain fluid milk to highly processed forms of dairy that are little more than vessels for salt, sugar, and fat”, while cash from the dairy checkoff scheme is being used to promote ‘junk foods’ such as Dominos pizza and McDonald’s McCafé frappé chocolate chip shakes, according to a new report.

In ‘Whitewashed: How Industry and Government Promote Dairy Junk Foods’ public health lawyer Michele Simon (Eat Drink Politics) says the issue is not
“whether or not dairy is essential to the diet”, but whether it is right that ‘dairy junk foods’ such as pizza and sugary yogurts ‘get a pass’ while soda and burgers come under fire.

11% of all sugar goes into the production of dairy products

She adds:
“The assumption that eating dairy is essential to the diet has obstructed out ability to criticize federal government support for unhealthy forms of dairy. Most of the processed cheeses, frozen desserts, and yogurt [that]
industry promotes as health foods, nutritionally qualify as junk foods.”

The government, adds Simon, should not allow sugary and salty dairy foods to be approved as ‘Smart Snacks’ in schools; while dairy checkoff funding (the scheme collects a mandatory 15c on every hundredweight of milk sold or imported) should not be used to promote dairy foods that conflict with dietary guidelines.

She then goes on to document how dairy consumption patterns have shifted:

• Consumption of milk as a beverage has decreased nearly 50% since 1909.

• About half of all fluid milk is consumed as flavored milk, with cereal, or in a drink (the other half is consumed as plain milk).

• Nearly half of the US milk supply goes to make about 9bn poundes of cheese (the single largest source of saturated fat in the diet) an 1.5bn gallons of frozen desserts (two thirds of which is ice cream).

• 11% of all sugar goes into the production of dairy products.