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Evidence is emerging that in fact yes, it is largely due to dietary changes.

Prior to circa 1970 most people, including children, drank whole milk. I should state that in two parts: (1) most people drank milk, and (2) the milk was very largely whole milk. But then a huge shift in consumer habits came about in relation to milk consumption, and this was due to the enormous influence of a 1967 report from Harvard, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The report looked at certain carefully selected studies, and ignored other studies that gave contrary evidence. The report’s conclusions were simple: Cardiovascular Disease was mainly caused by eating animal fats, and sugar had no causal link with Cardiovascular Disease.

The three Harvard researchers had been paid $5,000 by the Sugar Research Foundation to produce that report. And the people who paid for the report also were able to read it prior to its publication, to ensure that its conclusions were what they wanted them to be. These three researchers were working in a department of the Harvard Medical School. In the mid 1960’s these same researchers and their colleagues needed a new building in which to work at Harvard. The makers of Cheerios, the company called General Mills (who are BIG users of sugar) donated one million dollars to Harvard for that department to be based in. If this seems shocking, it is. Have a look at this article in the New York Times to get a fuller understanding of that episode.

How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat

Please do click the link above, and take the time to read that article.

Now, how does this relate to milk, and childhood obesity? The New England Journal of Medicine was the most authoritative journal of its kind in the world, and the report was from researchers at Harvard, so it had HUGE influence. By that I mean within several years the report had laid the basis for government policies in the USA, in Canada, the UK and most of western Europe. The official nutritional advice from all these governments was simple: avoid animal fats. If you want to be healthy, don’t just eat lean beef, or fish, or chicken. You should also switch from butter to margarine (BIG mistake..!!). And stop drinking whole milk, and instead have skimmed milk. And if you don’t like the taste of skimmed milk, then at the very least drink semi-skimmed milk. PLEASE AVOID that dangerous WHOLE milk..!! But don’t worry about carbohydrates and sugar, those are fine for you.

Have you ever read Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White? In that story, a common farming practise is mentioned a few times, which is to give skimmed milk to pigs. In the UK and the USA this has been done for over a century. Why? Because a farmer knows that skimmed milk leaves the pig hungry, and so the pig will gobble up its food more readily, and thereby put on weight more quickly than would otherwise be the case.

Not sure if this is a reasonable answer yet? Then here is the evidence.

A new study has just recently been published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. It is a “systematic review and meta-analysis led by St. Michael’s Hospital of Unity Health Toronto.” It found children who drank whole milk had 40% lower odds of being overweight or obese compared with children who consumed reduced-fat milk.

They analysed 28 studies from seven countries that explored the relationship between children drinking cow’s milk and the risk of being overweight or obese. The studies involved a total almost 21,000 children between the ages of one and 18 years old.

Whole milk compared with reduced-fat milk and childhood overweight: a systematic review and meta-analysis

and

Children who drank whole milk had lower risk of being overweight

One of the authors of this new report (Dr. J. Maguire) had conducted his own “observational” study a few years ago, looking at over 2,700 children in the greater Toronto area, aged between 1 and 6. Their own study had results that directly led to the meta-study mentioned above. What they had noticed was that the young children being raised by the parents on skimmed and semi-skimmed milk had a tendency to snack considerably more than the children being raised on whole milk.

In the UK, one well-known ‘media Doctor’ recently published an article in the Mail of Sunday, looking at the topic from a different angle.

DR MICHAEL MOSLEY: Why full fat milk is the best thing you drink

Dr. Mosley discusses our need for iodine, and how whole milk is typically our best source for it. We need iodine for the thyroid to produce thyroxine, which helps control our metabolic rate. If we don’t get enough iodine, we don’t produce enough thyroxine, and our metabolic rate will then drop, causing us to put on weight.

And he himself had drunk semi-skimmed milk for 20 years, having believed it was the healthier option.

So… we need to stop drinking skimmed and semi-skimmed milk. We need to stop fattening our children like pigs are fattened by farmers. And by the way, you won’t hear this advice from the dairy industry: they make more money by skimming off the cream, and selling that separately, than they do selling whole milk.

It tends to be only the small dairy farmers who understand the truth of the matter: that we have been lied to by industry and governments now for decades on this topic. I’m married to a dairy farmer, and she and her 3 sons are all lean and muscular. And they drink whole milk, every day.