The Federal Gov’t Has Misled Public About Milk For Decades

If you look up “whole milk” in the government’s official Dietary Guidelines, it states pretty definitively that people should only drink skim or 1% milk. “If you currently drink whole milk,” it says, “gradually switch to lower fat versions.”

This is the same advice the government has been issuing for many years. And it’s wrong.

Research published in recent years shows that people “might have been better off had they stuck with whole milk,” according to a front-page story in the Washington Post on Wednesday. “People who consumed more milk fat had lower incidence of heart disease.”

The story goes on to note that the government’s push for Americans to eat a high-carb diet “provokes a number of heart disease risk factors.”

As the Harvard School of Public Health’s Walter Willett put it, the “campaign to reduce fat in the diet has had some pretty disastrous consequences.”

The Post goes on to note that this “has raised questions about the scientific foundations of the government’s diet advice.”

It should.

Based on flimsy evidence, the USDA first started urging people to eat low-fat diets in 1977. As evidence grew that this advice was misguided — at best — it steadfastly refused to change course.

So what we have here is the U.S. government using its power and might to push Americans — quite successfully — to change their eating habits in ways that likely killed many of them.

If a private enterprise had done this, it would face massive class action lawsuits, its executives would be in jail, and its reputation permanently ruined.

But the government simply brushes off its own disasters, and goes right on telling people what they should and shouldn’t eat. The public would do well to tell government officials to stay out of the kitchen.

Written by John Merline for Investor’s Business Daily, October 7, 2015

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