Tag Archives: Diet

ESL milk panel: Innovation? Market optimizers?

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Dairy checkoff: ‘If we focus on whole milk, we miss these market optimizers’ Really?
At the 2025 Pennsylvania Dairy Summit, Paul Ziemnisky, DMI’s head of wellness, innovation, and business development, and Rebecca Pfeffer, Maola brand manager, with moderator Amy Mearkle (left) spoke about fluid milk innovation in which extended shelf life (ESL), otherwise known as ultra pasteurized (UP) milk, is seen as the gateway to new products aiming to meet ‘functional needs’ of consumers.

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, March, 2025

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. – Food-as-medicine, food-and-medicine, fun-and-portable, young kids talking about pre-aging, on-the-go snack and beverage convenience, the quest for guilt-free ways to unwind with fewer calories than wine, the growing double-income-no-kids (DINK) consumer landscape that is focused on wellness, consumer shifts from coffees to teas, the surge in protein demand, and the growth in sales of lactose-free milk… 

These are some emerging trends mentioned during a panel about extended shelf life (ESL) milk as the gateway to dairy checkoff’s Milk Molecules Initiative during the Pennsylvania Dairy Summit last month.

In the Feb. 21st Farmshine, we brought you part one, a panel overview in this three-part series. In this second installment, we dig into what Dairy Management Inc (DMI) is doing with protein in the fluid milk space, and the technologies they are working on to separate molecules.

This public launch of the Milk Molecules Initiative (MMI) comes after 10 to 15 years of work through the pre-competitive industry collaboration vehicle – The Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, a 501c6 established by DMI in 2008.

What we’ve learned is that MMI — as a fluid milk strategy — began even before the formation of DMI’s Fluid Milk Innovation Task Force seven years ago. It goes all the way back to 2010, right about the time whole milk choice was abolished in schools.

This strategy has been developed to discover, strip out, and repurpose the “functional benefits” of specific bioactive compounds, or molecules, in milk. The concept goes back to the early alliance between Fonterra and DMI, with headquarters less than three miles apart in the suburbs of Chicago around O’Hare Airport.

This strategy has been under development via research grants from USDA, NIH, and the National Dairy Council to the Dairy Research Institutes at four university locations, including the Barile Lab at the University of California-Davis. There, researchers have worked on isolating compounds from both human and bovine milk, and more recently, student researchers have been working on a DMI project “building a digital ecosystem and platform for these milk compounds.”

The Feb. 2022 memorandum of understanding between DMI and Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, is tying-in the human health linkages to specific bioactive compounds in milk, and the Feb. 2024 DMI partnership with PIPA, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform, is accelerating the knowledge gain in how to break down milk’s so-called “bioactive family tree” to leverage functional milk products with new health benefits.

“We are finding the molecules in the whole milk matrix and picking things that are on the ‘whey stream’ as one area of focus, such as stripping out the lactorferrin,’” said Dairy Summit panelist Paul Ziemnisky, head of wellness, innovation and business development for Dairy Management Inc. (DMI), who has spearheaded the work of the Fluid Milk Innovation Task Force.

“We have partners talking about building a lactoferrin plant centered on just one of thousands of molecules in milk. We are looking at how to protect this molecule so it doesn’t lose its bioavailability, so we can put it back into dairy (post-processing),” he said.

Ziemnisky observed how past checkoff messaging has touted things like: “chocolate milk as a recovery beverage.”

Today, he said, “We’re going beyond that. We’re looking at ways to add milk to milk and to use these concepts to give it a different look and to capture huge value potential.”

How does DMI plan to partner with industry to capture this value? By linking milk and technology to create new products.

According to Ziemnisky, the MMI is looking aggressively at encapsulation and separation technologies as well as drying technologies that can be patented while testing the concepts with consumers to “learn how to talk about it.”

“If we focus on whole milk, we miss these market optimizers,” Ziemnisky declared. “Whole milk is for the 17% of traditionalists. We must innovate this category. We’re giving consumers a reason to understand what they need.”

He says MMI and ESL are pathways to get “milk” into more top-demand moments to capture a larger share of the $159 billion total beverage category.

(More ultra processed beverages are just what global consumer packaged goods companies are famous for. But is this what consumers really want? And will the ‘huge value potential’ trickle down to farm milk checks?)

According to Ziemnisky, there is at least $2 billion in new investment coming into the beverage space across geographies. “But it’s not your father’s Oldsmobile. Those new plants are filtration and separation, and we can add functionality to it.

“There are things we know of that we can’t even talk about yet,” he said as he gave a snapshot of where MMI is, and what is yet to come.

He cited a proliferation of ESL milk beverages that are mainly lactose-free, high protein milks as the gateway to molecular separation. Examples included the ESL capabilities at the Maola plant in Philadelphia, the national launch of Milk50 by DFA, the new nutrition line of beverages developed by Dairy Gold, Nestle’s new line made exclusively for Target, and others.

Asked if these new products are taking sales away from non-milk alternatives or traditionally branded milk, Ziemnisky said DMI’s work with MilkPEP shows that the plant-based beverages – on a volume and value basis – are “over-shelved.”

“They haven’t grown their category, their volume is declining. Those guys are eating themselves — going after each other. They’re not going after us anymore because they can’t. We win with nutrition and value. When we see all the innovation that is coming into dairy, we’re taking our space back by meeting the functional needs of the consumer. The quality of the protein is in demand now,” he said, confirming data showing that, “People are coming back to us because of the nutrition and the quality of the protein.”

During questions, he dug into the health and wellness “playbook” that checkoff has created with the help and blessing of USDA and has put into the hands of the top people at all of the big companies in food processing and retailing. 

“We’ve traditionally undersold our nutritional benefits, and that’s changing,” he said.

Where MMI comes into the picture is to identify the bioactive molecules for separation and marketing linked to specific health claims that can go on a label.

A graduate student in the audience said the presentation gave her “a lot of hope in the future as a scientist.” She asked if DMI has noticed any difference in regional trends related to consumers, and specifically wondered what is happening in California?

Ziemnisky said California was moving the other direction. “They like to try things out there,” he said, explaining that the dairy industry is so volume- and scale-focused that pilot products are not the norm. 

“California is coming back. California has assets that do smaller runs to try things. Last year, California grew (beverage milk sales) at a faster pace, whereas the Northeast market is so heavily regulated,” he said, adding that government regulation puts pressure on local retailers who want to try things.

DMI’s role is to test and learn, he explained: “We help processors prove these markets to retailers. Value-add is 30% of the dollars in the fluid milk category today. We went to 30% from just 10% just 10 years ago. We are targeting both volume and value with our retail and direct sales teams.”

One attendee asked what checkoff can do about the out-of-stock issues at retail, noting that perhaps fluid milk sales would increase if the dairy cases were consistently well-stocked.

“When we ask the store people, they say we don’t do the orders, it all comes from above us,” the questioner said.

Ziemnisky replied: “They are not telling you the truth. The real out of stock rate nationally is 3%. The problem is they are not managing their inventory. The inventory is there, but not the labor.”

“What we run into is the problem is store help,” said John Chrisman of ADANE, jumping into the conversation, noting new laser-system camera technologies are coming within the next five years to issue alerts about what is “flying off the shelves.”

In the meantime, he told attendees to report out-of-stocks to ADANE so they can get it resolved.

Another question asked was how farmers can feed or manage their herds to hit higher levels of functional bioactives like lactoferrin.

Ziemnisky said that’s a question for the milk buyers’ field service personnel, but in general, feeding cattle to hit higher component levels will raise the functional level of milk molecules like lactoferrin.

This reporter asked Ziemnisky what DMI is doing to know if there is any change in the protein structure with the further processed options: “How are we protecting that message on whey protein by protecting its structure through the ultra pasteurization process?”

(The only published research we could find was an NIH study showing heat and mechanical processes of ESL packaging change the structure of the protein, namely the whey protein.)

Ziemnisky replied that DMI is “doing significant work” on the nutrition research side to prove the efficacy of dairy’s high quality protein vs. other proteins. 

“And on the product science side, we’re investing significantly in everything from the clarity of protein, so you can put it into other products, to the quality as it goes through different processes that it stays stabilized. We work with the industry on what are the needs we can solve,” he assured.

On follow up questioning about protecting the protein, he added that, “Encapsulation is just one technology we’re doing to preserve the bioactive pull, and we have other things underway as well. We also look at the byproducts. What do we do with lactose coming through on the lactose-free? What do we do with the permeates on the cheese, the passive whey? These are where we’re doing work to create products from the bioplastics all the way to the functional ingredients.”

Bottom line, he said: “Whey was the bastard child, and now it is the largest gaining market share because of demand for high quality proteins. We are seeing the fractionation piece of this, the precision nutrition, the new players coming in and doing research on different compounds, driving whey to where it is today vs. 20 years ago.”

With an estimated 6300 molecules in milk identified by artificial intelligence, all located within the 13% of milk that is the solids, Ziemnisky expressed excitement about the future.

“We are at the cusp of this, and with our artificial intelligence partnerships, we are getting the learnings in 2 to 3 years that used to take 10 years,” he suggested. “This is moving fast toward a sustainable future with zero-waste circular milk plants.” 

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Editorial: Get it done or start ‘splainin’

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By Sherry Bunting, Editorial in Farmshine May 30, 2025

While the landmark MAHA Commission was working on its initial report released May 22 on the chronic childhood disease crisis, Pennsylvania state lawmakers have been assembling a “Healthy PA Package” that includes five bills – H.B. 1130, 1131, 1132, 1133, and 1134 – that would either ban or require specific labeling for foods containing certain artificial dyes and preservatives; provide statutory definitions for terms like “ultra-processed foods,” designate August as Wellness Month, and provide incentives for cover crops based on their use in producing healthier crops using less chemical herbicide…

But there is one state bill that should be part of this Healthy PA Package, and that is S.B. 463, the “Allowing Whole Milk in PA Schools Act,” reintroduced in March by State Senator Michele Brooks, a Republican representing Mercer County. It would simply allow Pennsylvania schools to purchase and serve whole and 2% milk produced within the state instead of being limited to offering only 1% and fat-free milk.

After all, the MAHA Report describes whole milk as “a rich source of calcium, vitamin D and bioactive fatty acids, which support bone health, help regulate inflammation and may reduce the risk of type two diabetes.” And the MAHA Report could reform some key elements of the anti-fat Dietary Guidelines. But it was lawmakers in Washington in 2010 that specifically singled out whole and 2% milk in a passage within the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act and states are left to bow down to King Vilsack, who drove the school bus on that deal.

In the previous session of the Pennsylvania State Senate, Sen. Brooks’ bill on whole milk had been reported out of the State Senate Ag Committee but never made it to the Senate floor for a vote. In the House, Rep. John Lawrence’s companion bill was passed by the full House last session, but was never approved by the Senate before the legislative session ended in Dec. 2024. At that time, there were murmurings of USDA canceling state school lunch reimbursements or other state funds from mighty USDA after a certain general farming publication mentioned the stance of Vilsack’s USDA in terms of the legality or illegality of such a state measure. 

Meanwhile, Tennessee and North Dakota have passed state legislation to pave a path for whole milk in their schools. If more states did this, even if it is tough to implement, it sends a message, and perhaps the leadership log-jam in Washington would break down and run the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act and get-it-done already. It appears to have broad bipartisan support, at least that’s what all of the lawmakers seem to want to portray in front of the cameras.

So, here we are in the 2025-26 legislative session at the state and federal levels having to start all over again, covering the same ground, talking the same talk, pointing out the same points that have been discussed, written about and testified to numerous times over the past 10-plus years.

“The (federal) Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 put restrictive regulations on the consumption of whole milk in schools. In the first two years this legislation was enacted, 1.2 million fewer students drank milk with their lunch, yet still had access to sugary drinks that offer no nutritional value. This not only has terrible health and nutrition impacts on children, but major economic impacts, especially in Pennsylvania,” writes Sen. Brooks in her memo to colleagues seeking cosponsors for reintroduction.
 
In her memo, she cites testimony from a Senate Majority Policy Committee public hearing in June of 2021, in which the Grassroots Pennsylvania Dairy Advisory Committee volunteers and 97 Milk supporters testified, along with other industry leaders and officials.

She cites dairy’s economic importance to the Commonwealth, and the testimony showing the improved physical and brain health that whole milk’s unique matrix of fatty acids provides, noting “this fat is necessary in the daily diet and energy to support cell growth. Other health benefits of milk include improved bone health, lower blood pressure, and reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes.”

Again, here we are with words upon words but no one’s running the votes upon votes to get it done.

Let’s stop talking and just do it. Lawmakers in Harrisburg and Washington can talk until they are blue in the face about doing something for dairy farmers or doing something to feed hungry children or deliver better childhood health and nutrition. They can come up with all kinds of elaborate schemes to make factions happy or align the stars on the curious realities of milky politics.

My message to folks at both Capitols is simple: We live in the United States of America — land of the free and home of the brave, where our valiant soldiers have fought and died to give and maintain our liberty – yet their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren are prohibited from choosing whole milk as an option with school meals they rely on two meals a day, five days a week, three-quarters of the year. Heck, even our soldiers are limited because mess halls have to subscribe to those low-fat dogmas as well. 

One of the biggest obstacles for this bill early on was that most Americans laugh in disbelief when you tell them this. Absurd! They say. My kids have milk at their school, they laugh. And the federal government pays for all that milk to go straight into the trash… Oh, tell me more.

Can I be frank? My husband hears me talk on the phone about whole milk in schools and he laughs at the absurdity that I’m still talking and nothing has been accomplished. I am just one of many. As more voters see the absurdity, respect for elected officials wanes. I find it absurd that we are still talking about something that should have been finished long ago already. If we can’t do the simple stuff that has obvious bipartisan support, how in the world are we ever going to do the tough stuff? What’s the hold up? Is it industry? Is it leadership? Is it lip-service? Is it PETA? Is it Vegans? Is it the brainwashing game of the Heart Association as a pawn of Big Food and Big Pharma? What gives?

After 10-plus years, farmers, children, parents, teachers, school boards, and communities that have worked on this issue deserve an answer. Fess up to the real reason it’s still stymied or VOTE for goodness sakes – VOTE in both chambers – now—so these federal and state whole milk bills can get to the President’s and Governor’s desk in time for schools to actually put it in their food plans for the next school year. Time is running out. And the delays are now tiresome.

If these chambers aren’t going to vote, then they better tell us what the real holdup is and start naming names. Some of us have children and grandchildren who are anxiously waiting and hoping. Some of us have cows that are offended to know their nature’s most perfect food can’t be offered to children without being fooled around with. And some owners of those cows need to have hope that the hard work they do to provide high quality whole milk is reflected in what America’s children get to choose at school where they spend most of their time and eat two meals a day, five days a week, three-quarters of the year.

Get it done, or start ‘splainin.’

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Senate Ag hearing overwhelmingly endorses whole milk in schools

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By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, April 4, 2025

WASHINGTON, D.C. – We need to be the change-makers that our students and farmers both need. We need to bring back the ability to offer milk fat choice in schools, including nutrient dense whole milk – which, by the way, is just 3.25 to 3.5% fat,” said Krista Byler, a witnesses during the hearing by the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Forestry, and Nutrition to “review the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, S. 222, and improve children’s health.”

April 1st, the day of the hearing, was a great day for America’s children and dairy farmers, and that’s no April Fools joke!

The livestreamed hearing opened with a reminder from Senate Ag Chairman John Boozman (R-Ark.) that the whole milk bill had passed the House in the last Congress “by an impressive 330 to 99 vote” and his desire to “make progress in the Senate.” 

Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) expressed her support for the bill and thanked Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) for introducing it. She also set the stage to broaden the hearing to other school nutrition matters. (To be covered in a separate article at another time).

The hearing ended with universal expressions of bipartisan support, thanking the Senate’s ‘milkman’ Marshall. Several Senators urged moving the bill forward as a standalone without delay.

“If we can do something that’s good, let’s do it, and then we’ll do the next thing that’s good,” said Senator Peter Welch (D-Vt.), the bill’s prime cosponsor, addressing the Chair. “This committee has an opportunity to help the Senate be a better Senate, we can take a bill like this that we agree on and move it before we get a full farm bill. It doesn’t matter what our politics are, we all care about our kids. I hope as we pursue this whole milk opportunity for our kids and our farmers that it’s the beginning of a real commitment to nutritious, locally produced, natural foods.”

In between the open and close, the Senate Ag Committee heard from and questioned five witnesses, spending the first chunk of time with Dr. Eve Stoody, Director of the Nutrition Guidance and Analysis Division at the Center for Nutrition Policy, within the Food Nutrition Service of the USDA. 

She is tasked with supporting the development of the Dietary Guidelines (DGA) since the 2010 edition and is the self-described career subject matter expert on the DGA process.

She revealed that 90% of Americans don’t consume the daily recommended amount of dairy, a statistic that has worsened over time, setting the stage for nutrient shortfalls.

“Across the board… whatever the form is, we need to have greater consumption of dairy,” she said, citing national survey data showing that on any given day, the percentage of adolescents reporting drinking milk was 75% in the 1970s, just under 50% in the early 2000s, and about 35% in the most recent data.

Chairman Boozman asked what justification was used to remove whole and 2% milk from schools in 2010?

Instead of addressing that question, specifically, Dr. Stoody said the current Dietary Guidelines recommend “most” dairy be low-fat or fat-free, but the guidelines (10 years later) in 2020 were constructed as overall dietary patterns with more flexibility.

“It’s also a reality that we kind of have a number of calories that individuals should consume, so across the guidelines we recommend consuming foods from all of those different food groups and that most should have little to no added sugars or saturated fat to help us stay within those calorie limits,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of room in the calories of the diet to consume milk and dairy with higher fat.”

Stoody parsed this as a population-level guideline: “That doesn’t mean whole milk and higher fat dairy can’t be part of a healthy diet, but it’s really important to look at the overall diet. The DGAs are there to provide flexibility based on needs and preferences.”

(This confusing ambiguity opened the door for the next panel to walk through, even though only two of the remaining four witnesses talked about the whole milk bill, while the other two talked exclusively about USDA’s recent cuts to programs like the local farm-to-school cooperative grants and concern about changes to how school lunch eligibility. Even those witnesses agreed that simplifying regulations and providing flexibility allows schools to focus on the quality of the meals instead of being bogged down by red tape.)

“I’m here because this issue matters to the children I serve, so it matters to me,” said witness Dr. Keith Ayoob, Associate Professor of Pediatric Nutrition at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. He runs a diagnostic and treatment clinic working with mostly low-income children, and their families, in the Bronx.

“A plethora of research demonstrates consumption of cow’s milk provides children with better bone health, a lower risk of type II diabetes, and a lower risk for cardiovascular disease,” he shared, as he zeroed-in on milk’s 13 essential nutrients, including 3 of the 4 under consumed nutrients calcium, potassium and Vitamin D.

He said saturated fat does not occur in foods in isolation, and new research shows the protein-fat matrix “behaves differently” in the body. “While other foods that are lower in saturated fat can also lower cardiometabolic risk, they can’t deliver the 13 essential nutrients in milk. Milk delivers a package I’ve not been able to find in any other food or beverage.”

Krista Byler of Spartansburg, Pennsylvania testified next. She is the Foodservice Director and District Chef for the past 20 years at Union City Area School District, or as she puts it: “The professional chef turned lunch lady.”

The granddaughter and wife of former dairy farmers, she was the one witness to bring a combined experience in dairy farming, culinary arts, and childhood nutrition, saying she believes “access to good quality nutrient dense whole food is a basic right of education.”

Byler spoke from the heart, bringing experience and data. She described the impact of the 2010 Childhood Nutrition Reauthorization’s school milk changes on students and dairy farm families.

“It was heartbreaking… we were seeing a huge increase in waste and a huge decline in the amount of milk that I was actually ordering because our children were not choosing to take the milk,” she said.

In 2018, Byler attended an event with the School Nutrition Association where she met Rep. Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson (R-Pa.) – the decade-long champion for The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act. 

At that meeting, Byler said she heard her peers also talking about the large amounts of waste. She was later introduced to the Grassroots Pennsylvania Dairy Advisory Committee of dairy farmers and school-involved parents, affiliated with what later became the separate milk education nonprofit 97 Milk.

(The Grassroots PA Dairy Advisory Committee is chaired by Bernie Morrissey, with current participants that include dairy farmers Nelson Troutman of Berks County (the Milk Baleboard painter), along with Dale Hoffman and Tricia Adams of Potter County, certified RN school nurse Christine Ebersole of Blair County, Dr. Ed Silverman, a retired internal medicine physician, Mike Sensenig of Sensenig’s Feed Mill, and this reporter who helps in communication. Like the separate board comprising 97 Milk, all the work is done by volunteers without compensation.)

This grassroots committee invited Byler to do some data collection. She explained that in the 2019-20 school year, with the blessing of her school board of directors, they conducted a school milk choice trial at the middle and high school, offering all levels of milkfat, both flavored and unflavored.

“The results are astounding.” Byler said, referencing her written testimony to find more complete data and survey results.

“What I want to really drive home are two main data points: The 50% increase in milk consumption (evidenced by ordering more milk) and the 95% — that’s right – the 95% reduction in milk waste, just because we offered a variety of milk choices that fit our students’ needs,” she said to the visibly astonished Senators who had previously unsuccessfully asked the first witness from USDA for such data.

“That’s incredible. It’s amazing when we give a little education and we give the choices, eventually the consumer makes the right choice,” said Sen. Marshall who is a medical doctor and prime sponsor of the bill in the Senate. He described his frustration in seeing the impact of osteoporosis and osteopenia, when bone density has not been built in the first 26 to 28 years of life.

Byler explained that the school student council helped collect, measure, and document the waste, and they “took a little heat after the 2020 school year when we (ended the trial) and went back to not being able to offer the variety. Overwhelmingly, students said they want something that is satisfying. Athletes, especially, were very vocal about wanting something that sticks with them. It’s a perfect recovery drink.”

Dr. Ayoob agreed: “My kids in my clinic have said that they find skim milk ‘watery.’ They may take that carton of milk. The school will get reimbursed. But I’m concerned that they drain that carton, not just take a few sips. Not only is there less food waste but more nutrition goes into the children.”

Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-Calif.) reminisced that he didn’t grow up with much money in the bank, but was blessed to have a dairy down the street. “Today when I get a carton of milk at the store, my habit is still to shake it because growing up that cream rose to the top, and we knew we had to shake it if we were going to enjoy it.”

“Our kids want to do better. They want to eat better. We have their attention,” said Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.V.), who spent his days with students as a longtime coach. “We have an opportunity here to step up. I am absolutely, wholeheartedly in favor of moving forward with whole milk.”

Every Senator present and asking questions expressed or implied support from both sides of the aisle.

With a nod to “the milkman Sen. Marshall,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said he had to read through the list he had been provided of the organizations that are opposed to the bill, including the American Heart Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. He then asked the USDA representative what health organizations are for it? Dr. Stoody said she didn’t have that information.

(Perhaps more to the point, were her continued circular answers that forced this realization: The “population-level guidelines” get drilled down to individuals in governmental feeding environments, which then feed into the health and nutrition organizations and back again. Meanwhile, individual health and nutrition practitioners are out there seeing real people as individuals every day, wondering how to get off the spinning merry-go-round.)

Chairman Boozman asked Dr. Ayoob how policymakers have gotten it so wrong in drawing a correlation between whole milk and obesity?

“Actually, the correlation is inverse,” Dr. Ayoob declared. “A review of the studies in my written testimony show that greater consumption of dairy foods, including whole fat milk, has been associated with less obesity and less cardiometabolic risk.”

He said in 2010 when whole and 2% milk were first removed from school meals, obesity prevalence was about 17%. Since that removal, it has increased. “It’s now 21%, and it’s higher, about 25%, in black and Hispanic children, the population that I work with.” 

Ranking Member Klobuchar came back to calcium, asking Dr. Ayoob to explain why it’s so important at this stage.

“We don’t have our whole lives to build our bone bank. We have the first 25-ish years,” he replied. “If they skip milk in school, that might seem like it’s no big deal for a day, maybe even for a week. But if they forgo a glass of milk every day they are in school for 12 years, we’re going to graduate kids with a diploma and not very good bones. We owe our kids better than that. Osteoporosis and osteopenia are really pediatric diseases with adult consequences.”

Sen. Marshall drove this point home in his questions for all witnesses. He talked about the milk fat as carrying key vitamins and facilitating absorption. He and Dr. Ayoob talked back and forth about how replacement beverages, like soda, take the missed opportunity with milk and add further negative impacts.

“No matter what type of milk is offered in school, none of it is nutritious until students drink it, and they don’t drink it often enough, which presents nutrition and dietary gaps, especially in low-income groups, where 77% of a child’s opportunity for milk intake is from school meals,” said Dr. Ayoob.

“Chef Byler, what’s your advice to us as we look at bringing whole milk back to schools?” asked Sen. Marshall.

“It’s been said very well by others today, that we can do better,” she replied. “If we just bring back the milk choice to schools, we would see a huge increase in consumption, a huge decrease in waste, and satisfaction for our students would be through the roof.” 

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Whole milk choice for schools takes center stage

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Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act reintroduced in style!

‘Most nutritious drink known to humankind’ takes center stage at Ag Secretary confirmation hearing

This split-screen moment captures Sen. Roger Marshall, M.D. and Agriculture Secretary Nominee Brooke Rollins during their confirmation hearing exchange on bringing whole milk choice back to schools. Sen. Marshall always comes prepared with THE MILK! Livestream screen capture by Sherry Bunting

From grassroots volunteers to halls of Congress, ‘hat’s off to 97 Milk’

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, January. 31, 2025

WASHINGTON, D.C. – It was the high point of the four-hour confirmation hearing on Jan. 23rd for President Trump’s Ag Secretary nominee Brooke Rollins, when Senator Roger Marshall, MD (R-Kan.) poured himself a glass of whole milk in front of the television cameras, and said:

Ms. Rollins, welcome. I want to know if you agree with me that whole milk is the most nutritious drink known to humankind and belongs in our school lunches.”

He then promptly took a big swig of nature’s nutrition powerhouse that American children have been banned from consuming at school meals since 2012.

Yes, there was a ripple of good-natured laughter throughout the room at the absurdity of it all – the absurdity that this nutrition powerhouse has actually been banned for 13 years on school grounds to even be bought with one’s own money from midnight before the start of the school day to 30 minutes after the end of the school day, per the 12-years of King Vilsack that Secretary Perdue’s interruption even failed to overturn.

The new Ag Secretary nominee Rollins responded with a hand motion to her mother two rows back among the family, friends, colleagues, ag teacher, fellow former FFA state officers and current little league team she coaches in attendance for the confirmation hearing, as she replied with a hearty and all-too-knowing laugh:

“Senator, I don’t know that you have met my mom – yet. But this is all we had in our refrigerator growing up – not anything else – just whole milk. She is absolutely never going to let us forget this – the fact that this is coming up! But yes, this hits home to me very quickly,” said Rollins.

On the very same day, whole milk champion U.S. Representative Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson (R-Pa.) with prime cosponsor and pediatrician Rep. Kim Schrier (D-Wash.), along with Senator Marshall and prime cosponsoring Senators Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) and John Fetterman (D-Pa.) led the re-introduction of the bipartisan, bicameral Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act of 2025, known as H.R. 649 in the House with 90 total cosponsors to-date, and S. 222 in the Senate with 12 total cosponsors to-date.

The bill in its fifth attempt will allow unflavored and flavored whole (3.25 to 3.5% fat) and reduced-fat (2%) milk to once again be offered in school cafeterias, which are currently only permitted to have fat-free and 1% milk available for growing children, much of which is shunned or thrown away.

“Federal policy, based on flawed, outdated science has kept whole milk out of school cafeterias for more than a decade,” said Rep. Thompson in a Jan. 23rd press statement. “Milk provides 13 essential nutrients for growth and health, two key factors contributing to academic success. The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act of 2025 provides schools the flexibility they need to offer a variety of options, while supporting students and America’s hard-working dairy farmers.”

“As a pediatrician, I know how important a balanced and nutritious diet is for children’s health, well-being, and development,” added Rep. Schrier. “A healthy diet early in life leads to proper physical growth and improved academic performance and can set the foundation for lifelong healthy eating habits. Milk contains essential nutrients… This bill simply gives schools the option of providing the types of milk most kids prefer to drink.”

Sen. Marshall was blunt, saying, “(It) should never have been excluded from the National School Lunch Program. Now, 13 years after its removal, nearly 75% of children do not receive their recommended daily dairy intake. I believe in a healthier future for America, and by increasing kids’ access to whole milk in school cafeterias, we will help prevent diet-related diseases down the road, as well as encourage nutrient-rich diets for years to come.”

“Milk provides growing kids with key nutrients they need. Dairy is also an important part of Vermont’s culture and local economy, which is why our bipartisan bill to expand access to whole milk in our schools is a win for Vermont’s students and farmers,” said Sen. Welch.

Sen. McCormick said the bill “puts milk back in schools that growing kids actually want to drink. Pennsylvania’s dairy farmers supply this country (with it)… allowing schools to serve (it) in the lunchroom is just commonsense.

“Kids need it,” said Sen. Fetterman. “Let’s give them the option to enjoy whole milk again in schools – it’s good for them, they’ll actually drink it, and it supports our farmers. This bill is a simple solution that benefits everyone.”

Both National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) and International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) rushed to the forefront singing the bill’s praises and promptly issuing press releases, something that in past attempts took a little time.

As longtime milk market guru Calvin Covington noted at the R&J Dairy Consulting seminar in eastern Lancaster County Jan. 28th, kudos go to the grassroots efforts. He showed the increase in whole milk sales nationally, while other fluid milk categories have declined. This has somewhat stabilized the steep losses the entire fluid milk category has suffered most steeply in the past 14 years. 

“My hat’s off to all of you and what you have done here in Pennsylvania, throughout the state and country, in promoting whole milk. I just wish other dairy farmers would be grassroots like you are and get involved,” said Covington. “Your work has paid off. Look at this graph. In 2013, whole milk sales were a little over 14 billion pounds. Last year (2024 with 11 months of data) I’m estimating 17.5 billion pounds. Whole milk is coming up, and everything else is going down.”

Covington dug into the graph (above) further to show that in 2019, the amount of whole milk sold was 16.9 billion pounds. “But look what happened in 2020, it jumped up to 17.4 and then back down to 16.62 in 2021. That was the pandemic. People were home. Schools were closed,” he said.

“When they were home, they drank good-tasting milk, but unfortunately when the schools opened back up, they had to go back to the other stuff. But my hat’s off to what you’ve done here. We’re selling more whole milk, and one thing people forget is that 100 pounds of Class I milk sales with higher fat content — last year it averaged 2.4 in this market compared to what it was 15 years ago when it averaged less than 2% — the more fat sold in Class I milk, the more income for you as dairy farmers. Class I butterfat is worth more than butterfat in the other markets, so my hat’s off to what you’re doing.”

(Author’s Note: Yes, Covington is speaking of the good work, the hard work, of 97 Milk volunteers who formed the non-profit in 2019 after dairy farmer Nelson Troutman’s painted bales began appearing. This good work is sustained by a handful of volunteers and donations. Just think what could be accomplished with more involvement. One of those volunteers is Jackie Behr of R&J, who puts her marketing skills to work for 97 Milk. She reminded farmers that donations are needed to keep the milk education movement going. An Amish Wedding Feast fundraiser is scheduled for Feb. 8 at Solanco Fairgrounds, with sponsorships still available. The next 97 Milk meeting open to all dairy farmers is March 25 at Durlach-Mt. Airy Fire Hall near Ephrata, Pennsylvania. Check out 97milk.com to learn more about the milk education movement, and hit the donate tab to find out how you can help.)

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Good news may trump bad nutrition policies

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Editorial Analysis: Tumultuous 2024 spills over into 2025 – Part One

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, January 3, 2025

EAST EARL, Pa. – Year 2024 was tumultuous, and 2025 is shaping up to be equally, if not more so. Spilling over from 2024 into 2025 are these three areas of potential for good news to trump bad nutrition policies that are having negative impacts on dairy farmers and consumers.

Farm bill and whole milk bill

Both the farm bill and the whole milk bill showed promise at the start of 2024. No one championed the two pieces of legislation more than House Ag Committee Chairman Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson (R-15th-Pa.). He even found a way to tie them together — on the House side.

The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act made it farther than it ever has in the four legislative sessions in which Thompson introduced it over the past 8 to 10 years. It reached the U.S. House floor for the first time! But even the overwhelming bipartisan House vote to approve it 330 to 99 at the end of 2023 was not enough to seal the deal in 2024.

That’s because over in the U.S. Senate, then Ag Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) blocked it from consideration — despite over half her committee signing on as cosponsors.

GT Thompson, found a workaround to include it in the House farm bill, which passed his Ag Committee on a bipartisan vote in May. The language was also part of the Senate Republicans’ draft farm bill under Ranking Member John Boozman (R-Ark.)

It too fell victim to Stabenow dragging her feet in the Senate. By the time the Ag Chairwoman released a full-text version of the Senate Democrats’ farm bill, little more than 30 days remained in the 2023-24 legislative session.

Key sticking points were the House focus on dollars for the farm side of the five-year package. It put the extra USDA-approved Thrifty Food Plan funding into the overall baseline for SNAP dollars and brought Inflation Reduction Act climate-smart funds under the farm bill umbrella while removing the methane mandates to allow states and regions to prioritize other conservation goals, like the popular and oversubscribed EQIP program.

Attempts to broker a farm bill deal failed, and on Dec. 20, another one-year extension of the current 2018 farm bill was passed in the continuing resolution that keeps the government funded into the first part of 2025, without amendments for things like whole milk in schools. However, Congress did manage to provide $110 billion of disaster relief for 2022-24 hurricanes, wildfires, and other events. Of this, roughly $25 billion will go to affected farmers and ranchers, plus another $10 billion in economic disaster relief for agriculture.

Looking ahead, there is good news for the farm bill and whole milk bill in the new 2025-26 legislative session. The House Ag Committee will continue under Rep. GT Thompson’s leadership as Chairman. On the Senate side, whole milk friendly Boozman will chair the Ag Committee. With Stabenow retiring, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) will serve as Ranking Member, and she previously signed on as a Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act cosponsor in March 2024.

The whole milk bill will have to start over again in the Education and Workforce Committee with another vote on the House floor. It was enthusiastically supported by prior Education Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-5th-N.C.). Her years of chairing this committee have expired, but the good news is Rep. Tim Walberg (R-5th-Mich.) will step in, and he was an early cosponsor of the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act in the 2021-22 and 2023-24 legislative sessions.

New Dietary Guidelines

The 2025-30 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) submitted its ‘Scientific Report’ to the outgoing USDA and HHS Secretaries on Dec. 19, 2024 — just 40 days before they head out the door to be replaced by incoming Trump appointees.

The Report is the guidance of the so-called ‘expert committee’ that reviews evidence and makes recommendations for the Secretaries of USDA and HHS to formalize into the 2025-30 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs). This process occurs every five years.

The DGAs are used in all USDA feeding programs, including school lunch, childhood daycare, and eldercare institutional feeding, as well as military mess halls. They also inform food offerings in many other controlled settings. 

The bad news is the Report has gone from being increasingly pro-plants over the past nine cycles to being outright anti-animal in this 10th cycle.

The good news is that dairy keeps its special spot on the so-called ‘My Plate.’ The bad news is that despite acknowledging evidence about the benefits of milkfat in nutrient dense milk and dairy foods, the DGAC rated the evidence as ‘limited’ – largely because USDA screened much of it out of the review process.

In the section on under-consumed nutrients of public health concern, especially for children and elders, the DGAC noted that whole and 2% milk were top sources of three of the four: Vit. D, calcium and potassium. Even this was not enough to persuade them to loosen the anti-fat grip that governs milk in schools, daycares and eldercare.

The DGAC states in its Report that their ‘limited access’ to research showing positive relationships between higher fat dairy and health outcomes was “too limited to change the Guidelines.”

They even doubled-down on the beverage category by recommending against flavor-sweetened fat-free and low-fat milk and that water be pushed as the primary beverage. 

In the Report, the DGAC also doubled-down on saturated fat with recommendations to “reduce butter, processed and unprocessed red meat, and dairy for replacement with a wide range of plant-based food sources, including plant-based protein foods, whole grains, vegetables, vegetable (seed) oils and spreads.”

This opens the door for more non-dairy substitutes beyond soy-milk, which is already allowed in the dairy category. In fact, the Report looks ahead to future cycles changing the name of the dairy category to broaden what qualifies as makers of new dairy alternatives improve their nutrition profiles via ultra-processing. At the same time, the DGAC punted the ball on the question they were given about “ultraprocessed” foods and beverages, stating they didn’t have access to enough evidence on health outcomes to answer that question. (The next HHS Secretary might have something to say about that.)

Other animal-based foods such as meat and eggs took a big hit this cycle. The 2025-30 Report uses stronger methods for discouraging consumption. They recommend moving peas, beans and lentils out of the vegetable category and into the protein category and listing them FIRST, followed by nuts and seeds, followed by seafood, then eggs, and lastly meat.

Once again ‘red meat’ is mentioned throughout the report as being lumped in with ‘processed meat’ even though not one stitch of research about negative health relationships with processed meats included any unprocessed red meat in the studies! Clearly, consumption of whole, healthy foods from cattle is in the crosshairs. This 10th edition of the Scientific Report just continues the trend. 

As in past cycles, a whole core of research on the neutral to beneficial relationships between consumption of saturated fat in high-protein, nutrient-dense foods was screened out of the DGAC’s review process by current Ag Secretary Vilsack’s USDA.

This Report essentially sets the stage for ultra-processed plant-based and bioengineered alternative proteins to play a larger role in the institutional meal preps of American schools, daycares, eldercare, and military.

But here’s the good news! The DGAC was late in finishing its 2025-30 Scientific Report!

The law requires a 60-day public comment period before USDA and HHS formulate the actual Guidelines for 2025-30. This mandatory comment period ends Feb. 10, 2025. Comments can be made at the Federal Register link at https://www.regulations.gov/document/HHS-OASH-2024-0017-0001

By the time the comment period ends, Vilsack and company will have left town. Let’s hope Senators confirm Trump appointees before the public comment period ends on Feb. 10 so their eyes are on this before the bureaucracy finishes the job.

This is a golden opportunity for the dairy and livestock sectors, along with health and nutrition professionals and health-conscious citizens to weigh-in. (Look for ways to participate in a future Farmshine.)

Meanwhile, commenters can remind the incoming Secretaries of how flawed the DGA process has become; how Americans, especially children, have become increasingly obese with increasing rates of chronic illness and underconsumption of key fat-soluble nutrients during the decades of the DGA’s increasingly restrictive anti-fat, anti-animal dogma.

Commenters should point out the fact that the Committee was not provided with all of the evidence on saturated fat. This is a message that is likely to land well with USDA Secretary designate Brooke Rollins and HHS Secretary designate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In fact, RFK Jr. is on record opposing the low-fat dictates and has said nutrition will be among his first priorities, if he is confirmed by the Senate for the HHS post.

FDA’s final rule on ‘healthy’ labeling

In the mad rush at the end of 2024, the FDA released its final rule about using the term “healthy” on the label of foods and beverages.

This process was outlined in the White House National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition and Health. FDA’s preliminary ‘healthy’ labeling rule was released on Sept. 28, 2022, on the first day of the first White House Nutrition Conference since the 1980s.

At that Conference, Ag Secretary Vilsack said: “The National Strategy’s approach is a whole of government approach that involves the entire federal family.” And President Biden said: “We have to give families a tool to keep them healthy. People need to know what they should be eating, and the FDA is using its authority around healthy labeling so you know what to eat.”

In short, the FDA’s role here is to restrict healthy label claims to foods and beverages that meet its criteria and allow them to also use a new FDA ‘healthy’ symbol that is still under development.

“Nutrient-dense foods that are encouraged by the Dietary Guidelines – vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fat-free and low-fat dairy, lean game meat, seafood, eggs, beans, peas, lentils, nuts, and seeds – with no added ingredients except for water, automatically qualify for the ‘healthy’ claim because of their nutrient profile and positive contribution to an overall healthy diet,” the FDA final rule states.

No surprise that whole milk (3.25% fat) will not qualify, nor will real full fat cheeses, yogurts, and other dairy foods that are not fat-free or low-fat (1%). Natural, unprocessed beef, pork and poultry are off the ‘healthy’ list too.

Specifically, the FDA’s final rule states: “To meet the updated criteria for the ‘healthy’ claim, a food product must: 1) contain a certain amount of food from at least one of the food groups or subgroups (such as fruit, vegetables, grains, fat-free and low-fat dairy and protein foods) as recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and 2) meet specific limits for added sugars, saturated fat, and sodium. 

The fat and sodium criteria are a double-whammy against most real dairy cheeses. A single 1-oz slice of American, Swiss, or Cheddar won’t make the cut on saturated fat or sodium; even part-skim Mozzarella is slightly over the limit. Furthermore, low-fat, high-protein cottage cheese barely makes the cut on saturated fat, but far exceeds the new limit on sodium. Likewise, a typical yogurt cup only qualifies if it is low-fat or non-fat, and fruited yogurts must steer clear of added sugars.

Dairy can’t win in this labeling scheme unless products are made with virtually no saturated fat and far less sodium. To sell flavorless cardboard and chalk water that fails to deliver key fat-soluble nutrients, products will undergo more ultra-processing, and Americans will consume more artificial sweeteners.

Under dairy products, FDA’s final rule for ‘healthy’ label claims states: 1) Must contain a minimum of 2/3 cup food group equivalent of dairy, which includes soy; and 2) Each serving must have under 2.5 g of added sugar, under 230 mg sodium, and under 2 g saturated fat.

This means even a serving size of exactly 2/3 cup (6 oz) of 2% milk might barely squeak by, and a full cup (8 oz) of 1% or fat-free milk would be – you guessed it – ‘healthy’. Flavoring the fat-free and low-fat milk will not qualify, except by using artificial sweeteners to stay within added sugar limits.

Under protein foods, the FDA is even more restrictive. The only protein foods listed in the ‘healthy’ labeling final rule are: game meat, seafood, eggs, beans, peas, lentils, seeds, nuts, and soy products. Furthermore, these options must meet the criteria of less than 1 g added sugars, less than 230 mg sodium and less than 1 to 2 g saturated fat.

But here’s the good news! This FDA final rule (21 CFR Part 101, RIN 0910-AI13) falls under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It’s not likely to sit well with HHS Secretary designate RFK Jr. The rule becomes effective Feb. 25, 2025. The compliance date is three years later, so there is hope of requesting HHS initiate a new rulemaking process under new HHS leadership.

Bottom line is all three of these bad nutrition policies impact consumer health and dairy farm economic health and are rooted in the flawed Dietary Guidelines process.

There is good news on that front in Congress as well. House Ag Committee Chairman GT Thompson included DGA reform and oversight in the farm bill that had passed his Committee in the 2023-24 legislative session. It is critical that this issue be part of the new farm bill that moves forward in the 2025-26 legislative session.

Part II in a future Farmshine will look at the tumultuous 2024 dairy markets and margins spilling over into 2025.

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‘Stop feeding us lies’ say protesters as Dietary Guidelines Committee unbelievably doubles down against animal fat, protein

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Dietary Guidelines have most negatively impacted children and youth.

Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee holds final meeting. Draft recommendations include: Reductions in total protein; Less protein from animals, more from plants; Dairy emphasis still low-fat, non-fat; Implementation recommendations include food supply leverage

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, October 25, 2024

WASHINGTON, D.C. – This week is National School Lunch Week, and on Oct. 22 while USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack kicked off the so-called “largest federal-led summit in support of healthy school meals” in Las Vegas, the 2025-30 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) met publicly by zoom to gamble away the nutrients children need for the development of their brains, bodies and long-term health.

This was the seventh and final meeting of the DGAC after 22 months of subcommittee meetings and periodic full committee meetings, yielding a draft “scientific report” that is increasingly vegetarian.

Its recommendations to USDA and HHS are to develop 2025-30 Guidelines that significantly decrease the role of nutrient dense animal foods, even though they spent the first hour of the 12-hour, two-day virtual meeting puzzling over how to solve the nutrient deficiencies in their analysis.

The recommendations merge the three current DGA patterns (Vegetarian, Mediterranean and Healthy U.S.) into one dietary pattern with a draft name of “Healthy Flex U.S. Diet.” The flexibility part, according to the DGAC discussion, is the ‘how much’ and ‘how to’, which relies on ‘food pattern modeling’ and more specific strategies on how to replace animal based foods with plant based foods. 

The DGAC aims to improve its poor performance on the under-consumed nutrients by “including more nutrient-dense plant-based meal and dietary recommendation options” in its advice for 2025-30 Dietary Guidelines. 

The draft advice aims to continue to “emphasize consumption of low-fat or non-fat dairy and unsaturated fats; limit consumption of red or processed meats and foods high in saturated fat; and limit foods like sweetened beverages.”

Some committee members raised the concern that further addressing one problem (fat, salt, and sugar) leads to other problems in other areas (under-consumption of key nutrients, over-consumption of carbohydrates, and impacts on metabolic health). 

In fact, a week before the DGAC met, the first ever Change the Dietary Guidelines protest drew hundreds of people to the nation’s capitol — with Nina Teicholz, author of Big Fat Surprise, as emcee. It was organized by Metabolic Revolution with the mission of asking the Administration to “STOP FEEDING US LIES.”

Nutrition Coalition photo

Meanwhile, in the DGAC meeting, at least one member at the end of the first day noted how animal foods, specifically mentioning dairy, have all of these essential nutrients and that the bioavailability of the nutrients is important.

This didn’t make much difference. On the question of saturated fat restrictions, the 2025-30 DGAC doubled-down. These restrictions began with the first edition in 1980, and the quantitative recommendation of “limit saturated fat intake to less than 10% of calories per day starting at age 2 and replacing it with unsaturated fat, particularly poly-unsaturated” began in 2005.

The Committee’s biggest justification was that, “This has been confirmed by several previous DGACs based on the relationship between saturated fat intake and cardiovascular disease risk.” Basically saying it has been previously decided, and “we’re sticking with it.” Essentially, all evidence to the contrary was again ignored.

The Committee stated that only 1 in 5 Americans implement this limitation; so, food replacement strategies, cultural diet pathways, and diet simulations were recommended to show how to get more nutrient density from plant sources. Pre-packaged and pre-portioned implementation strategies and plated combinations of plant-based meals are suggested as ways to ensure nutrients without the fat.

This high-level academic exercise means very little to everyday Americans making choices about food, but it could fundamentally change what is available to choose from — if the “systems science, implementation science, and behavioral science” the DGAC is also recommending pushes diets even more toward highly processed, pre-packaged, pre-portioned options designed by global food giants.

Bottomline: the DGAC will recommend to the USDA and HHS to further reduce animal-based protein consumption and to further increase plant-sourced consumption in the 2025-30 Guidelines, while continuing to limit dairy to non-fat and low-fat options.

For dairy, the DGAC is also recommending that USDA update nutrition composition and dairy reference guides to reflect what they say are ‘improved’ plant-milks, and to use ‘diet simulators’ to show Americans how to be more ‘flexible’ in replacing animal foods with plant foods.

The DGAC also changed the wording of its 2025-30 mission to “reduce the focus on chronic disease risk reduction, to instead focus more on promoting growth and development and improving the healthspan.”

These are key takeaways despite the Committee spending the first hour of the first day stupefied by the analysis showing — uniformly across all socio-economic and cultural demographics — children ages 5-19 had the nutritionally poorest diets in terms of under-consuming key nutrients at this most critical lifestage.

Even when they picked up their Health Equity Lens to look at the data, it was uniformly bad.

The DGAC could not understand why the healthy eating index showed such uniformly poor performance in the under-consumption of key nutrients, especially among children ages 5 to 19 across all populations. (Simple. It’s because the anti-fat DGAs are enforced at school meals twice a day, five days a week, most of the year for this life stage. Kids do not get to choose; adults do.) Oct. 21 screenshot DGAC meeting 

Their interpretation? I will paraphrase: Parents need help understanding how to feed their children.

My interpretation? The Dietary Guidelines are, themselves, the problem because they are used rigidly to formulate the meals that the age 5 to 19 lifestage (kids) are presented with twice a day, five days a week, nine to 12 months of the year – at school! The body will keep snacking until it gets the nutrients it seeks. 

“Obesity is a major public health issue, impacting 36% of children ages 2 through 19 years and 41% of adults ages 20 and older,” according to the DGAC.

However, by the end of the two days, the DGAC showed it would stay on the anti-fat path and give USDA and HHS the “expert” advice to double-down on saturated fat restrictions that have prevailed over the years while Americans become less healthy, more obese, with more chronic disease, at ever younger ages. Do they not wonder why this was not the situation pre-Guidelines? So much valuable research on saturated fat and health was again left off the table.

One of many draft advice slides for 2025-30 Dietary Guidelines emphasizing non-fat and low-fat dairy and unsaturated fats; addressing nutrient density by increasing plant-based meal options and decreasing animal-based. Oct. 21 DGAC meeting 

Impacts of the DGAC draft report on Dairy:

1) Dairy’s ‘place’ in the diet remains somewhat intact, but the committee advises things like not referring to soy milk as an “alternative” because it is part of the dairy grouping. They also are questioning if ‘Dairy’ is the right term for the Dairy group. The DGAC also will advise USDA to update nutrient composition and daily reference amounts to reflect the current state of nutrition art in “plant-milks” and to use diet simulations to show Americans how to be more flexible in replacing animal-based with plant-based.

2) Nonfat and low-fat dairy will continue to be the recommendation (3 milk cup equivalents), although they mentioned that there was not enough evidence to make this a strong conclusion for ages 2 through 5. Perhaps this leaves a door open for daycares and WIC to expand to 2% and whole fat milk up to age 5 instead of the current age 2, but schoolchildren are still out of luck. Dairy fat and butter were mentioned as being consumed mostly in processed foods.

3) The Protein category has been flipped on its lid. The DGAC moved beans, peas and lentils from the vegetable category to the protein category and increased the daily quantities for beans, peas, lentils, seeds, soy, nuts, and fish, while reducing the allowance for meat, poultry and eggs. In fact, they will represent this visually by listing first in the protein category the plant sources, followed by fish, then eggs, then poultry, and lastly, red meat. The DGAC pointed to the dairy group as a source of protein that is not in the protein group, so protein level importance in plant-based comparisons can be reduced. (Several Committee members indicated their belief that Americans consume too much protein, so they wanted to show these crossovers differently.)

4) The additional considerations chapter is of particular concern for the future, advising USDA and HHS to: a) Encourage shifts to nutrient-dense plant-based meals; b) Put stricter limits on foods and beverages high in added sugars, sodium, and saturated fat; c) Use sugar limitations to exclude foods from the dietary pattern (with implications for flavored milk and dairy products); d) Make sodium reduction targets mandatory not voluntary (may impact the cheesemaking process for schools and other institutional feeding); e) Avoid referring to soy milk as “alternative”; Research name change for Protein group and determine if ‘Dairy’ is the right term for the Dairy group.

This draft report ends the DGAC’s work. In the coming days, it will be edited to reflect the discussion for submission as final recommendations to USDA and HHS.

A joint team of staff from both Departments will prepare this DGAC Scientific Report for posting at DietaryGuidelines.gov, along with data analysis, food pattern modeling and other supplemental documents. 

USDA and HHS will then open a new public comment period.

In 2025, the Secretaries of USDA and HHS (whoever they end up being), along with their joint team, will review the DGAC scientific report and the public comments to develop the actual 2025-30 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Expect these DGAs to continue most negatively impacting America’s schoolchildren and elderly in senior centers where meals must follow them.

However, it will have some impact on all of us if the Departments use the DGAC recommendation to implement food system science at the food supply level. We can already see what happens to choices for consumers and markets for farmers when the middlemen decide what can be put on grocery store shelves or in the dairy or meat case.

Not only did we not see a serious effort to address the need for more nutrient dense foods in the dietary pattern, the new pattern will double-down against saturated fat, along with salt and added sugar, and erode protein levels, while continuing to search for the missing nutrition profile of its increasingly vegetarian recommendations. 

None of this passes the smell test, and likely not the taste test. Kids eat food not data. Nutrients must pass the tongue to reach the belly. Look for more on that in terms of action next week from the Grassroots Pennsylvania Dairy Advisory Committee and 97 Milk.

***

Additional information:

In its report, The Nutrition Coalition notes: “The collective shift toward emphasizing more plant-based foods has lowered the quality and quantity of protein in our diets. It is time to pause and question whether these changes are endangering health in the U.S., especially among children and the elderly. Still, with plant-based advocates dominating the public comments, plant-based industries and interests lobbying the USDA, and plant-based proponents on the expert committee itself, we may see further reductions of this important macronutrient in the 2025 Dietary Guidelines.”

Nina Teicholz, Ph.D. explains that these draft recommendations “fly in the face of our knowledge that plant proteins are of lower quality than animal proteins. With the exception of soy, all plant proteins lack all the necessary amino acids to make muscle tissue (as well as perform other critical functions in the human body). Reducing the total amount of protein and replacing animal proteins with plant proteins are both harmful changes. These alterations will mean that anyone receiving USDA-funded meals, such as kids consuming school lunches, the women and infant children on the WIC program, and the elderly will receive fewer complete proteins. Also, reductions in meat, dairy and eggs are sure to exacerbate nutritional deficiencies in the guidelines, which currently fail to meet basic targets iron, vitamin D, vitamin E, choline, and folate. The Dietary Guidelines are already deficient in complete proteins. The erosion of protein in the guidelines has been happening for decades, as we wrote about in this post.”

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Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act S. 1957 needs more cosponsors: We need your help! Please contact your state’s two U.S. Senators

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The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act has moooved to the Senate. S. 1957 is identical to H.R. 1147. As of Feb. 21, 2024, the Senate bill has 15 sponsors from 12 states. This map shows what states have both Senators or one Senator signed on and which states have none. We need more cosponsors to get this bill out of the Ag Committee and onto the Senate floor for a successful vote. Will YOU call or write TWO? Map by Sherry Bunting

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, January 26, 2024 (Cosponsor data updated Feb. 21, 2024)

WASHINGTON — The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act is now up to the Senate, where more cosponsors are definitely needed to push it past some barriers and get it to the floor for a successful vote.

Senate bill S. 1957 is not a mandate for whole milk. This bill ends a mandate against whole milk, which is federally banned from schools (2% reduced fat milk is also prohibited. Only fat-free and 1% low-fat milk are allowed to be offered with meals or a la carte or in vending machines).  

In December, Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) blocked the unanimous consent motion by Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.). Marshall was seeking an immediate Senate vote on H.R. 1147 – Congressman G.T. Thompson’s bill – on Dec. 14, 2023, just one day after it was overwhelmingly passed in the House of Representatives by a bipartisan 330-99 vote. It was previously passed in the House Education Committee in a bipartisan 26 to 13 vote.

Marshall chugged a glass of whole milk and gave an inspiring speech about getting the bill to the President’s desk for Christmas. Sen. Marshall is a medical doctor, an obstetrician, and a member of the Senate Ag Committee.

“This is a slam-dunk for American families,” he said.

Sen. Stabenow played the role of the Grinch stealing the opportunity for immediate whole milk passage in the Senate on the heels of the overwhelming House vote as she objected to the unanimous consent request on Dec. 14.

But that’s not the end of this story, just the beginning.

An identical Senate bill, S. 1957, The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act was introduced in June 2023. It was read twice on the Senate floor and referred to the Senate Agriculture Committee, chaired by — you guessed it — Sen. Stabenow of Michigan. This means she is in a ‘gate-keeper’ position for this bill. If it doesn’t come before her committee, it will have trouble getting to the floor.

This is where we can help by raising the number of Senate cosponsors! There are 15 sponsors as of Feb. 21 (updated). We need to get to one-third or one-half of the Senate. That’s 35 to 50.

While news reports indicate Sen. Stabenow will retire after this term and is not seeking re-election, her legacy in caring about childhood nutrition and agriculture may be important to her. She stated on the Senate floor that these decisions about milk in school should be made by the scientific committees. She wants to “keep having these conversations.”

Let’s take her up on that by having conversations with our Senators to cosponsor S. 1957. The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee has for three cycles and over 15 years refused to consider the preponderance of sound evidence about the benefits of milkfat that the USDA keeps screening out of their deliberations process. 

The DGA Committee is meeting right now for 2025-30 DGAs that seek to refine the current dietary patterns, not re-evaluate them. Even the DGA Committee in 2020 admitted their recommended dietary patterns are deficient in key nutrients that milk delivers.

Here’s the bottom line: S. 1957 was introduced in June 2023 by Sen. Marshall (R-Kan.), along with Senators Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), James Risch and Mike Crapo (both R-Idaho), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Angus King (I-Maine).

Four more cosponsors have been gained, they are Senators J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Mike Braun (R-Ind.)

As of January 24, 2024, S. 1957 has 14 sponsors from 11 states in the U.S. Senate. Of these 15, seven are on the Senate Ag Committee (Marshall, Hyde-Smith, Gillibrand, Fetterman, Welch, Grassley, Braun). 

We need the rest of the Ag Committee, including Ranking Member John Boozman (R-Ark.). If you live in Arkansas, contact him. If you live in Minnesota, contact Ag Committee Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith; in Illinois, Sen. Richard Durbin; in Ohio, Sen. Sherrod Brown; in Kentucky, Sen. Mitch McConnell; in Iowa, Chuck Grassley has already signed on, but Joni Ernst has not; in North Dakota, talk with Sen. John Hoeven; in South Dakota, Sen. John Thune; in Nebraska, Sen. Deb Fischer; in Georgia, Sen. Raphael Warnack; in New Mexico, Sen. Ben Ray Lujan; in Alabama, Sen. Tommy Tuberville; in Colorado, Sen. Michael Bennet; and in New Jersey, Sen. Cory Booker.

No matter where you live, contact your state’s two U.S. Senators. We need as many Senate cosponsors as possible, and we need Senators motivated to speak with Chairwoman Stabenow, to ask her to please stop putting the ego and agenda of Washington bureaucrats above the health and welfare of America’s children and the economic stability of America’s dairy farmers.

This bill is about choice. It is not a mandate. It simply allows schools to offer whole and 2% flavored and unflavored milk at school lunch and breakfast without financial penalties for exceeding outdated milkfat limits that are unnecessary or even harmful to children.

If we want children to benefit from the nutrition milk delivers, then we need to deliver the permission for our children to be able to choose milk they will love at school where they have two meals a day, five days a week, three-quarters of the year. That’s how they actually benefit from the complete protein and 13 essential nutrients milk delivers.

Let’s stay positive. We can’t afford to lose ANOTHER generation of milk drinkers and think we will still have a dairy industry in many parts of the U.S. The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act is an opportunity for dairy farmers to revitalize and renew fluid milk demand, but more importantly, it’s an opportunity for schoolchildren to choose milk they will love for life and health. It’s also an opportunity to drastically cut the amount of wasted milk in school cafeterias, a win for stewardship of resources and the environment.

A 2021 survey by IDFA showed that 78% of American parents who described themselves as voters, choose 2% or Whole Milk for their families as the most delicious and nutritious option, but their children can choose neither 2% nor Whole milk at school where they have two meals a day, five days a week, three-quarters of the year.

This survey is consistent with what a Pennsylvania school trial in 2019 showed. The students preferred Whole Milk 3 to 1 over the 1% low-fat milk. When 2% and Whole Milk were offered in the coolers, students consumed 52% more total milk and the average daily volume of discarded milk was reduced by 95%. This means more students took the offered milk instead of refusing it, and fewer students threw away the milk they took with their meals.

The Grassroots Pennsylvania Dairy Advisory Committee, under chairman Bernie Morrissey’s leadership, has launched a letter-writing and phone-calling campaign seeking cosponsors for S. 1957. They have put together the tools, but grassroots farmers and citizens must be the ones to carry it out and send the letters and make the calls.

We need to help Senate Ag Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow understand this issue is about lifting the federal school lunch and breakfast ban that was placed on delicious nutritious whole milk in 2012 so that school districts, parents and students can make healthy milk choices that are enjoyed and not discarded.

This bill is not a mandate for whole milk. This bill ends a mandate against whole milk.  

This is about options, choice, and a future for kids and dairy farms. Will YOU call or write your TWO?

Let’s keep this bill moooving. Every state has two U.S. Senators. Click here for a sample letter.

Find the Washington addresses and phone numbers for your state’s Senators at https://www.senate.gov/ – Click the icon in the top left corner, select your state from drop-down menu to see how to contact them. Or look for your state in this printable directory.

For a more detailed letter, like the one sent by the Grassroots PA Dairy Advisory Committee to Senator Robert Casey, Jr. of Pennsylvania, click here.

For a simple phone message guide for contacting Senate Ag Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (and if in PA Senator Robert Casey) click here.

See the complete Action Packet and find some additional resources in a folder here

To email your Senators: Go to https://democracy.io/ – type in your address, city and zip code, click submit. Your two Senators and one Rep. will show up with red check marks. Click ‘Write to them.’ Then, on the next screen, write the body of your letter. If you want, you can start with who you are, where you live, what you do. You can also mention if you have school-aged children or grandchildren. Then copy and paste from the text below or write your own message simply asking your Senators to cosponsor S. 1957 The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act

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RE: Whole Milk for Healthy Kids, S.1957 by Senators Roger Marshall and Peter Welch

I write to ask you to cosponsor S. 1957, the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, to bring back the choice of Whole Milk in schools. This bill is not a mandate, it is about choice, so students can have the delicious Whole Milk option to benefit nutritionally from milk they will love. The House passed this in a 330 to 99 vote in December. We hope you will soon add your name to the list of cosponsors for the Senate. Whole milk is standardized at 3.25% fat (3.5% in Calif.). Systematic reviews of the scientific literature show milkfat should no longer be demonized by federal policies, especially for children.

Currently, 95% of U.S. schools are in the National School Lunch Program, which in 2012 made rules requiring only fat-free and low-fat (1%) milk be available to students during school hours. Since then, student milk consumption has declined drastically, and milk has become a most frequently discarded item. A 2021 survey showed 78% of parents choose whole or 2% milk for their families, but these options are restricted at school, where kids receive two meals a day, five days a week, three-quarters of the year. A 2019 school trial showed milk consumption increased by 52%, and waste volume decreased by 95%, when offerings were expanded to include Whole and 2% milk. More students chose milk, and fewer students threw away milk. That is a win for kids, dairy farmers and the environment.

This is a critical time to provide what milk delivers — complete protein and 13 essential nutrients. When students aren’t drinking the milk offered at school, they don’t receive its nutrition. In fact, the Dietary Guidelines Committee in 2020 admitted their recommended dietary patterns lack enough key nutrients, including three of the four nutrients of public health concern that milk provides: potassium, calcium, and Vitamin D, which is fat soluble.

Thank you in advance for helping bring the nutritious, delicious option of Whole Milk back to school lunch and breakfast by cosponsoring S. 1957.

**************

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Should dairy farmers be forced to fund ‘government speech’?

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Dietary Guidelines among the factors plunging us deeper.

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, Friday, March 15, 2019

Many are confused about what the dairy checkoff organizations can and can’t do. There is nothing in the Order that says the checkoff programs must promote according to the USDA Dietary Guidelines.

So where did this idea come from and how does it look today and what might it look like tomorrow?

To stave off challenges brought by folks questioning the government’s authority to require farmers to fund private speech, USDA defended the checkoff programs as “government speech,” which is a protected form of speech. This was explained in more detail in part 6 of the GENYOUth series in the February 22, 2019 edition of Farmshine.

Here’s why it matters. Government speech on dietary concerns has become increasingly restrictive, and by the looks of the recently-named USDA Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, it could get worse.

With so much control by USDA, how will dairy farmers fully defend their position — even when rigorous science is on their side? They can’t count on government speech because rigorous science is all too often ignored by government bureaucracies and the advisory committees with links to foundations and corporations that have other ideas for that money.

The proof is in the long trend of using mandatory farmer funds to promote the low-fat / fat-free government speech that has become their own undoing, not to mention detrimental to health, especially for our children.

Here’s a glimpse of where we are headed with this dairy-farmer-funded government speech.

Separation of Church and State, for example, seems to apply only when convenient for politicians. Could a religious doctrine of animal rights and vegan diets become even more embedded into the government Dietary Guidelines that dairy farmers are forced to promote?

I was told by more than a few people that Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue is a scientist and would not allow this to happen to his formation of the current committee, but the composition of this Dietary Guidelines Committee takes us further down this wrong road.

In fact, could the U.S. guidelines be on the brink of cowtowing even more toward the Adventist-funded EAT Lancet Global Food Transformation Agenda?

Some scoff, saying not to take this report seriously because it’s not gaining traction.

Unfortunately, they are not paying attention. This track has been laid and the wheels are in motion, and plenty of bargains with the devil have been made behind closed doors.

Our dietary choices are poised to be further corrupted. Just writing about these topics makes my blood boil and causes me to second-guess my own sanity. 

But folks, this is real. 

We can be proactive, or we can sit with our heads in the sand and be run over. This is happening, and our own leaders don’t want us to see it, hear it or speak of it. 

People can criticize the series of articles on this topic all they want, but the truth is that alliances formed — most notably over the past 10 years — are poised to plunge us even further into dietary guidelines, labeling, look-alikes and standards that have the potential to remove even more animal-based dietary choices from Americans — especially our children. 

As an ag journalist, I’m appalled. 

As a grandmother, watching the effect it is having and will have on our children, I am angry. 

What I see coming is a dietary future that will be a mix of fake proteins, grains, legumes, vitamin/pharmaceutical cocktails and high fructose corn syrup fashioned into whatever you want it to be or taste like from your 3-D printer.(Even the venerable Dr. Kohl talked about it at a farmer meeting and how much this “spooks” him out.)

In the beginning, these 3-D printer options may use dairy or meat proteins, but they are set up for not just plant-based proteins, and what some in the industry call “dairy-based” proteins. What does ‘dairy-based’ mean? (more on that later). The 3-D printer technology is the handmaiden of the gene-edited cell cultured fake-meat proteins and the gene-altered yeast sourced by USDA to a company growing them (with the commercial assistance of ADM) in fermentation vats to produce fake-dairy protein without the cow.

Here’s the deal: The co-author of the 2013 report favoring epidemiological studies of the vegan/vegetarian Adventist communities vs. rigorous scientific evidence was put on the USDA Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee in the capacity of weighing the scientific credibility of evidence to be considered by the committee in shaping the 2020-25 guidelines.

His name is Dr. Joan Sabate, and he was placed on the committee in this role instead of Stanford professor John Ioannidis — despite over 1000 letters supporting Ioannidis being sent to Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue by the public that included medical doctors, dieticians, veterinarians and other experts, including specialists in oncology, heart disease and endocrinology (diabetes, etc).

Not only is Sabate Chair of the Nutrition Department at the Seventh Day Adventist institution, Loma Linda University, he also constructed the vegan food pyramid and co-authored a book on Adventist doctrine for global change, called “The Global Influence of the Seventh Day Adventist Church on Diet” where this playbook is well laid out.

It’s pretty clear that Sabate has been given an influential position and has spent his career promoting a religious-dietary-doctrine with undue influence now in a government dietary advisory capacity.

Also, an article co-authored by Sabate in 2011 talked of how the Adventists praised the 2010 dietary guidelines that took the destruction of school lunch under the Obama / Vilsack administration to new lows. That report said the 2010 Guidelines “confirmed” the findings of Sabate’s predecessor at Loma Linda University.

Last Friday, while doing a Rural Route Radio show as a guest of Trent Loos, I learned from him a piece I did not know — that the Wellcome Trust, which wrote the check for the EAT Lancet Commission, is the trust of Henry Wellcome. He passed away in the 1930s, and was the founder of what is today a Big Pharma player.

Remove whole milk, full-fat dairy and red meat from our diets and we’ll all need more drugs for a panacea of ills. Yes, the EAT Lancet report calls for just a little over one ounce of meat per day, the equivalent of one 8-oz cup of milk per day and 1 and ½ eggs per week. See the picture?

Our kids are already drinking fat free or 1% milk in school, eating fake butter, skim processed cheese, non-fat yogurt (if you can call it yogurt) and a host of other real-food-replacements when they should receive the best nature has to offer.

Yes, there it is: The religious doctrine. Mr. Wellcome was an avid Adventist, and his legacy lives on through the EAT forum and initiatives that have pulled-in not only governments across the globe (through their respective bureaucracies setting diet standards) but also 41 major corporations that are poised to profit — including the Edelman PR and marketing firm,which provided their Amsterdam account director to that effort until she went to work for the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and its EAT FReSH Initiative the very month that the EAT Lancet report was released (as detailed in part 8 in last week’s Farmshine).

Yes, Edelman is the same PR and Marketing firm that has worked for dairy checkoff for 20 years and increasingly in the past 10 years and was instrumental in the GENYOUth formation (2010), a non-profit with a pretty face that is also tied in with the Clinton Foundation of the same persuasion, and the Obama / Vilsack administration’s heavy hit to school milk and the school lunch program parameters, which also happened in 2010.

This really is one big thing connected, moving gradually to where we are today amid several key converging factors.

Call me “negative” or “unhinged” or whatever name you have for this investigative reporting, that is your choice. Meanwhile, some of our own organizations are tied in, and it is disturbing. 

The dairy and beef checkoff organizations — whose budgets are funded mandatorily by the farmers and ranchers whose livelihoods and contributions to human and planetary health are in jeopardy — have aligned on the sustainability side with the noted anti-animal organization World Wildlife Fund (WWF). This is detailed on website documents and power point slides bearing the WWF emblem.

The template is set for a sustainability footprint that is focused on streamlining the food industry with rapid consolidation to get the WWF stamp of approval for the largest and most vertically integrated animal food producers.

Recently, other organizations that challenge these institutions have put farmers on a new HSUS ag-advisory board to try to influence that particular anti-animal organization to get a similar stamp of approval for small farms and regional food supplies. 

Meanwhile, the anti-animal heavy-hitters are laughing all the way to the bank as their strategy as kindred NGOs is to divide and conquer — while raking in hundreds of millions of dollars. Their strategy is working because there is division. Not because I’m writing about it, but because none of our organizations and institutions have the backbone to stand up for what’s right.

The mode of operation is to work quietly through alliances and advisory boards and non-profits — to paint a pretty face on these alliances, hoping to come out of the internal fray with a few crumbs for a surviving streamlined industry.

If you dare question these alliances or dig into them, you are attacked.

You must remain politically correct at all costs! Don’t touch the third rail! Shame on anyone who dare question! If you question, dig, report, enlighten (all while said organizations refuse to answer interview questions), then you are “negative”, “unhinged”, “divisive”, “harming farmers” and a journalist who has “an agenda” or is just trying to “sell newspapers.”

Not in the least. I would much rather be spending all of my time writing the positive stories, and I have quite a few lined up! But I can’t discard the concern for the people whose stories I’ve written as I watch one after another sell their cows and/or their farms, and as I’m deeply concerned for the health and well-being of our children.

It’s time for Congress to revisit the law authorizing the dairy checkoff. I don’t say this lightly. The dairy checkoff budget dwarfs all others at $350 million a year. That’s a huge budget of dairy farmer funding under increasingly detrimental USDA control.

Maybe government speech is “protected” under the law, but the law  should no longer require dairy farmers to pay for it.

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There’s a war to win for our health and our dairy producers

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NinaTeicholz0181Learn, then comment! Deadline: March 30!

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine March 2, 2018

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. – Never did Nina Teicholz envision herself talking about nutrition to groups of dairy and livestock producers and hearing how important it was to them to hear that the work they care deeply about and the product they produce is good, great, healthy, in its full-fat form after decades of being maligned by flawed advice for a low fat or fat free diet.

Nina Teicholz-27“Not only has this advice been bad for people, it is especially bad for children,” said Teicholz as she told her story of a decade of investigation met by intimidation uncovering stories of a scientist who bullied others who had alternative hypotheses and a powerful nutrition elite still controlling the food supply through their grip on Dietary Guidelines.

The author of New York Times best seller The Big Fat Surprise has not only challenged but also disproved the anti-fat dogma of 40 years and revealed the politics that have overshadowed the science in the confusing world of diets and nutrition.

In fact, she says, the power of an elite class of experts who control nutrition guidelines that in turn control the food supply is still strong and very tough to overcome – even when the evidence is not on their side.

imagesTeicholz’s Big Fat Surprise has had a ripple effect in the food industry among consumers since 2014,but the dietary elites have challenged her each step of the way.

And there’s a lot of war left to be fought for what is right.

This is especially true when it comes to the milk the USDA prohibits from being served in the National School Lunch program or through Women, Infants and Children (WIC) programs.

The intimidation that Teicholz and others have endured shows just how much is at stake and just how tough the politics are in trumping the science. With a steady drumbeat of proof, one would think the bad advice could be easily overturned, but the work is hard and it needs to continue, Teicholz indicates.

(Not only are the flawed guidelines affecting health, but also reverberating in their economic effects on family farms across the country, in part aided by the dairy industry accepting a role in working alongside former first lady Michelle Obama when it came to school meals, allowing her to deal the final blow to milk in school, while accepted yogurt on the plate as a compromise.)

Nina Teicholz kicked off the 2018 Pennsylvania Dairy Summit last Wednesday, Feb. 21 here in State College, treating nearly 500 dairy producers and industry representatives to an inside look at her 10 years of investigative journalism on this topic that began when her editor assigned her a piece on defining trans fats.

Little did she know then where this would lead her today. Who would have thought that the former vegetarian from Berkley, California and New York City would end up uncovering what may be the biggest nutritional tragedy done to consumers and dairy and livestock producers, worldwide.

She told Summit attendees that she began to suspect a problem when her initial inquiries started revealing a pattern of resistance.

“That’s where my deep dive into the world of fats began,” said Teicholz. “The fats we obsess about that have made us all crazy over what kind to eat and how much.”

She started hearing about scientists getting “visits” and papers being yanked from scientific journals. She started feeling the intimidation, herself, as she widened her investigative scope, reading scientific papers and seeking interviews with scientific experts at some of America’s most trusted universities and institutions.

“I would be interviewing scientists at top universities and they would hang up on me,” Teicholz revealed. “I thought, am I investigating the mob? What’s going on?”

Her deep dive into fats took her through a decade of work reading thousands of scientific papers and doing hundreds of interviews to write a book investigating the research on all fats in the diet.

“Every idea has a beginning, like an acorn to a tree,” said Teicholz, “and this had its beginning when President Eisenhower had a heart attack. This is when the concern about heart disease rose out of nowhere to be labeled the nation’s leading killer.”

Many ideas of causes were initially looked at, and then University of Minnesota physiology scientist Ancel Keys posited the cholesterol theory, that like hot oil down a cold stove pipe, would clog arteries and cause heart attacks.

Through her research, Teicholz discovered that so in love was Keys with his own theory that colleagues described his approach to the work of others as “bullying.”

“They described him as very charismatic and able to debate an idea to death. And, yes, a bully,” she said. “Once he was able to get his idea implemented into the American Heart Association, it was on.”

By 1960 he was on the nutrition committee and by 1961, “that acorn had grown into a giant oak tree of the advice leading to what we have today. The world transitioned from saturated to unsaturated fats,” said Teicholz. “But rarely do checks for common sense happen in the world of nutrition. Keys became ‘Mr. Cholesterol’ on the cover of Time Magazine with just one study.”

This study was not a randomized controlled study, but rather a series of contacts in seven countries relating diets to disease in middle-aged men.

Teicholz spent six months studying the Keys’ study. While it involved seven countries, the study looked only at the diets of middle-aged men and created this “big bang” theory. His study had been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

“But what happened is that Keys already had his idea. He loved his idea, and he set out to find what he found,” said Teicholz.

She outlined the numerous problems with the Keys study. It did not include countries with high consumption of fats and low rates of heart disease, which would have destroyed his hypothesis. He went to countries that were ravaged by war, not the countries that were eating well.

“And his star subjects were on the island of Crete, mainly hard-working peasants he worked with for three months one of which was during Lent, where he clearly undercounted the amount of fat these people ate,” Teicholz observed.

What was mind-boggling for Teicholz as she went through the record is that absolutely none of this theory — or the 40 years of advice that followed — is based on randomized controlled clinical trials.

“The government and the American Heart Association understood the evidence was weak, so the NIH funded a study to follow people through their death to set out to prove Keys’ theory this way,” she said.

Meanwhile it was being treated as gospel.

After more than a decade and following 75,655 men and women for one to 12 years, some of them with controlled in-patient diets, “The results showed no effect of saturated fats on cardiac mortality or total mortality!”

In fact, there was no effect whether subjects consumed 18% of their dietary calories in fat or 6%.

At the same time, Teicholz reports that people in the study, who had replaced fats with soy and margarine, had higher rates of cancer.

So, by this time in the presentation, it’s hard to keep the hair from standing up on your neck, and Teicholz asks the question: Why is this advice still around? Why is it still controlling food programs and markets?

“The politics explain so much more than the science,” she said. There is a small group of nutrition aristocrats controlling who they invite to lead panels or grant appearances, and they sit on editorial boards of medical journals and control these institutions.

“This is still true today,” said Teicholz, noting how an invitation for her to join a panel at an international conference was later withdrawn because the other people on the panel were key members of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines committee.

“This relative small (but obviously powerful) group does not include critics. They are the reason why we still have these ideas even if they are wrong,” said Teicholz.

An educated writer and scientist herself, Teicholz understands that scientists are trained to discover for themselves, but selective bias crept into nutrition the moment Ancel Keys at the University of Minnesota, fell in love with his own hypothesis.

Nina Teicholz-25A colleague of Keys had done research with 5000 people around the same time, but it didn’t see the light of day. This Minnesota Coronary Survey found no difference from fat in the diet between treatment and control. It is the biggest and most well controlled study of its time but was not published for 16 years!

Teicholz explained further that when the competing research was ultimately published, long after the Keys hyposthesis had grown into an oak with roots, it was only published in an out-of-the-way journal.

Meanwhile, it was the 1980s and Senator George McGovern initiated the Dietary Goals report, written by staffers with no background in nutrition, some of them vegans. This formed the basis for the food pyramid.

From that point forward, Teicholz showed graphs of the increase in obesity and diabetes. But as a science-minded journalist, she reminded her audience that the graph, by itself, didn’t show causation. However, other studies have proved causation, and she shared those as well.

In fact, studies have been showing that Americans really have been following the flawed dietary guidelines and that while consumption of full fat dairy is down, and pounds of fruits and vegetables up 20 and 30%, along with grains and cereals up 30%, obesity and diabetes has risen exponentially.

Nina Teicholz-29“We follow the guidelines and eat more calories, but all of those extra calories are coming from the increase in carbs,” said Teicholz.

So the third rail some say we dare not touch is that the hallmark recommendation of 60 minutes of exercise — meant to accompany the promotion of a low fat diet – was touched by Teicholz during her presentation.

The kicker is that Americans are not getting fat because they don’t exercise enough, she said. Not one study could show where this 60-minutes of exercise and a lowfat diet actually helped.

Nina Teicholz-30“We cannot exercise ourselves out of a bad diet,” said Teicholz. “Is it our own fault or is it the advice we have been given? I’m here to tell you that saturated fats do not cause cardiovascular death, and Canada is already working to remove the percent of fat requirement from their guidelines.”

In fact, Teicholz cited the work of Salin Ysuf, a leading cardiology specialist. His work showed that patients who ate the least amounts of fat had the highest risk of stroke and those who ate more, lived longer.

“We are in the midst of a paradigm change,” she said. “Cholesterol in the diet has not been proven to increase blood cholesterol. Eating egg whites instead of eggs has accomplished nothing.”

In a small step in 2013, the American Heart Association dropped its caps on cholesterol and this also occurred in the 2015 Dietary Guidelines. However, the recognition that a low fat diet doesn’t work has not made it to the dietary guidelines elite, and the next cycle to change them doesn’t happen until 2020.

“Fat is not making you fat,” said Teicholz. “It’s like a tragic horror movie. The truth is the fat we eat is not the fat we get.”

So what does cause disease? Teicholz explained the carb insulin hypothesis, where carbs become like glue in the bloodstream, and the body has to secrete insulin, a hormone, so the body socks this away as fat. She explained that not all carbs have the same effect and that gaining and losing weight also has a hormonal aspect being found as a key culprit in obesity and diabetes.

“There is a growing drumbeat of positive research coming out showing that whole dairy, full fat dairy, is good for cardio risk factors and that there should be no caps on cholesterol in the diet; however, the caps on saturated fat remain,” she said.

The reason the Dietary Guidelines are so powerful is that they control so much of what we think about what we are eating, according to Teicholz. She noted that soy milk has been allowed as a replacement for dairy milk in the Dietary Guidelines.

This is huge because these guidelines dictate what schools can serve, the WIC program and so many other aspects of nutrition where the government is involved.

“The Dietary Guidelines for Americans have huge control over the food supply, and trying to change them is so difficult because those in charge are so incredibly powerful,” said Teicholz.

This is why she has initiated the Nutrition Coalition to fight for our diets. Her aim is to have evidence-based Dietary Guidelines, and to see an end to the promotion of 60 minutes of exercise and a low fat, low sodium diet as what’s good for our children.

“This advice has not worked for people, and especially not for kids,” said Teicholz. At best, the 60 minutes of exercise is disingenuous when accompanied by low fat, high carb dietary advice, and at worst, the promotion of low fat and fat free is harmful.

Alas, her attempts so far, including a piece in a British medical journal about changing the flawed Dietary Guidelines was met with a petition signed by 180 nutrition aristocrats on the Dietary Guidelines committee, who demanded a retraction of Teicholz’s paper.

“It took them a year to put it out, but the BMC did their review and stood up strong for my paper,” she said. “This shows us just how much is at stake and how tough the politics are in this field of nutrition.”

Learn more about Teicholz’s work and the Nutrition Coalition she founded as well as how to comment by March 30, 2018 on issues to review in the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee’s next 5-year review for the 2020-2025 guidelines.
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To read other agmoos articles / columns authored by Sherry Bunting on the School lunch program and dietary guidelines from the past several years, here is a link: https://agmoos.com/2015/04/24/nutrition-politics-kids-and-cattle-caught-in-the-crossfire/

About Nina Teicholz: Nina is an investigative journalist and author of the International (and New York Times) bestseller, The Big Fat Surprise (Simon & Schuster). The Economist named it No. 1 science book of 2014, and it was also named a 2014 *Best Book* by the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Mother Jones, and Library Journal. The Big Fat Surprise has upended the conventional wisdom on dietary fat and challenged the very core of our nutrition policy. A review of the book in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition said, “This book should be read by every nutritional science professional.”

Before taking a deep dive into researching nutrition science for nearly a decade, Teicholz was a reporter for National Public Radio and also contributed to many publications, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, The New Yorker, and The Economist. She attended Yale and Stanford where she studied biology and majored in American Studies. She has a master’s degree from Oxford University and resides in New York City.

 

Reinventing milk… promotion

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MilkMarketMoosHeader070914.jpg

Reprinted from FARMSHINE, April 8, 2016

Fewer Americans eat breakfast today, adding to the milk consumption woes created when families stopped eating sit-down dinners, for the most part. Both were the staples of commodity fluid milk consumption that have been diminishing over the past two generations and four decades to where we are today.

Forecasters say it will only get worse. They are projecting continued declines in ‘white milk’ consumption while consumption of milk alternatives is predicted to increase dramatically through 2021.

A major reason is that the majority of urban consumers — up to 90% — do not view white milk (aka Vit. D whole milk) as a protein drink, when clearly it is the original, the natural protein drink.

But what is DMI working on? Alternatives. Checkoff dollars continue to flow through DMI to alternatives milks. Yes they are dairy products, but they are further processed, as in the case of Fairlife, which is ultrafiltered, for example.

I have had dairymen involved in these boards excitedly tell me: “We finally have a product consumers want!”

If they are referring to Fairlife, that may be true for consumers we’ve lost to Muscle Milk (which does contain some whey) or Almondmilk (which is the equivalent of eating an almond and chasing it with water full of thickeners, sugar and chemically added calcium and vitamins.)

But I find myself confused. Isn’t dairy promotion supposed to promote what contributes most to the dairy farmer’s milk check? I mean, it is the dairy farmer’s money, is it not?

As long as the Federal Order milk pricing scheme puts the value on Class I utilization, then the milk checkoff organizations should be most diligently promoting regular, straight-from-the-cow (pasteurized of course and maybe even flavored) milk as the healthy high-protein beverage it is, naturally, because I’m sorry to tell you friends, consumers just don’t know this information.

Milk: The protein drink that’s right under our noses and costs a lot less than fancy packaged and advertised alternatives — some of them complete frauds in that they are not even milk!

Why is it that milk alternatives can claim all sorts of things, but milk is not even allowed to advertise itself as 96.5% fat free! Why can’t the milk bottle say “8 times more protein than almondmilk per 8 oz serving!”

Why can’t it say: “Want Protein? Get Milk!”

Do we really need Coca Cola to revolutionize our branding? Or should dairy farmers take the bull by the horns and demand great packaging, savvy catch phrases, eye-catching point-of-purchase education, head-on comparisons to the fraudulent beverages that so wish to be milk that they call themselves milk.

No, USDA does not allow dairy farmers to promote their product comparatively with those other commodities that have stolen some of their market share by stealing the name milk. You dairy folks must play nice of course!

That’s hardly fair since dairymilk is losing market share. If you can’t defend your own market turf with your own collected monies, then what’s the point of collecting the money? All of these joint partnerships to sell cheese on pizza and mixes through frappes at McDonalds might move some more milk, but the value is in the Class I fluid milk, so unless we’re going to change the complicated milk pricing formula and glean more value and a guaranteed minimum for the manufacturing milk via its products, then we might just as well use the money to buy-back our own fluid milk and donate it to the poor to keep the demand for Class I tight vs. the supply.

Or put the money in a kitty to develop better fluid milk labels. Make them cool and splashy with P-R-O-T-E-I-N in large letters.

Milk: The original protein drink!

Milk: Protein drink of champions!

Milk: Why pay more? We’ve got what your looking for!

I could go on all day.

If the growth of our Class I milk markets rely on the USDA school lunch program, then we’re sunk and USDA is once again to blame for this dismal failure by tying the hands of school districts who want to serve 2% and whole milk.

Analysts say that the strong growth in the milk markets of emerging countries like Chile is attributed to their school milk programs.

In the U.S., milk is stigmatized as a “commodity.” We sure don’t help that with plain white bottles and lackluster graphics.

Milk alternatives such as soymilk and almondmilk (aren’t they so tricky in creating their own new words by paring their commodity to the word milk as one word) are increasingly viewed as ‘fashionable drinks’ and a more health-conscious choice compared to white milk.

Let’s reverse this trend by making dairymilk fashionable again!

Let’s call it dairymilk (a tricky combined word!) and come up with a new standard of identity that allows us to say 96.5% fat free instead of “whole.”

Maybe even come up with a standard for protein and say to call it dairymilk it must meet that protein standard and then colorfully package and protein-promote the heck out of it.

Analysts say that consumers like innovation in their drinks and they are finding “innovation” in the “newer milk categories” which are so much more attractive than the “mature” white milk category.

Okay then, let’s give the consumer what they want. Great tasting real milk but let’s reinvent the packaging and the promotion and the name… not the beverage itself.

Just think how much money we can save on fancy equipment if all we have to do is reinvent the promotion of milk, not reinvent the milk itself. After all, it is nature’s most nearly perfect food.

Maybe instead of fighting each other for Class I sales by moving milk all over to get the best price and utilization (see chart on page 13 showing that picture for the beleagured Northeast Order)… we should be fighting, instead, together, to save our beverage from its continued depreciation at the hands of internal politics, external politics, USDA rules upon rules, fraudulent not-milk-milks whom regulators ignore and even patronize, and other assorted casts of characters.