Why does Skim Milk have a bad rep?

When I was much younger I was raised on raw milk.

My parents bought it from a dairy farm north of where we lived.

However when my younger sister developed an allergy to something in the raw milk we ended up switching to store-purchased milk.

And I remember the switch clearly, because the store-purchased milk tasted watery in comparison.

Whereas raw milk is more creamy and rich.

Thus when comparing different types of milk....

2% milk

1% milk

skim milk

There really isn't that much difference between them. The only real difference is the amount of fat content found in the different types of store purchased milk.

Raw milk (which is boiled before you drink it to kill the bacteria in it) tastes absolutely amazing because it has all the original creamy goodness in it.

The milk you purchase in a store however is triple pasteurized. I know this because I grew up near the small town of Teeswater, which is home to the Teeswater Creamery (founded in 1872) and we would get tours of the creamery since the school was just down the street. It is the oldest creamery in Canada that is still in operation.

So what is triple pasteurization???

Well basically you boil the milk, skim the fat off, and continue boiling it down until all the water is gone and you are left with powdered milk.

That powdered milk is then re-added to water, boiled all over again, re-skimmed, and boiled down a second to into powdered milk again.

Seems silly doesn't it? But wait!

They do it a third time! Add water, re-boil it, and re-powder it.

Then the powdered milk is shipped to wherever it needs to go in powder form. Then water is re-added to it. Its boiled again so the atomic bonds of everything hold together, and then it is package and shipped to the store.

Oh and in the case of 2% milk and 1% milk they also RE ADD FAT to the recipe. It is fat that was skimmed off earlier in the process, pasteurized and labeled "cream", but its really creamy fat that they're adding to the mixture.

And then it is sold to idiots in groceries stores at a higher price because lets face it, fat tastes better.

Meanwhile skim milk, which in North America has 0% fat in it (in the UK it is approximately 0.2% fat), gets a bad rep from ignorant morons who think that skim is less healthy - when in reality skim milk is actually MORE healthy because it has zero fat content in it.

It just doesn't taste as good as its slightly more creamy counterparts 2% and 1% milk.

And certainly no where as good as raw milk.

Raw milk also has a bad rep too. It is illegal to sell raw milk in some countries, including Canada.

The reason is because of the name. People think it is literally "raw". Not realizing that it has in fact been boiled once already to kill the bacteria before you drink it.

The difference really is that when you purchase raw milk straight from a farmer then the farmer has either already boiled it for you, or you go home and boil it yourself on the stove before cooling it and drinking it.

CONCLUSIONS

So skim milk, which is extremely healthy for you, has a bad rep because of its complete lack of fat in it. (I personally love skim milk.)

And raw milk has a bad rep, despite being free of bacteria because its been killed in the boiling process, because it is illegal to sell raw milk to people - purely because the boiling / pasteurization process isn't "government approved".

SIDE NOTE

Some people also diss Chocolate Milk! How silly is that? They claim that chocolate milk is made with less quality milk and then they just add chocolate and sugar to it. And yes it is true, there is chocolate and sugar added to chocolate milk, but it has nothing to do with any "less quality" at all. It is made with the same triple pasteurized powdered milk that all the other store bought milks are made with.

EXTRA SIDE NOTE

For extra protein, I recommend mixing skim milk with whey protein powder (preferably the chocolate flavoured kind). The company I recommend is Six Star. Good for people who are into weightlifting like me.