The Dairy Industry

Ever since 1926, when the Medical Research Council's report of Dr. Corry Mann's experiment of giving an extra pint of milk to boys in a children's home showed that it improved their growth, British nutritional policy has encouraged milk drinking for children. And the British dairy industry has been geared to produce milk. There is, however, a deeply ingrained feeling that milk should be creamy if it is to be considered good. From this it is only a short step to believe that butter contains all the goodness of the milk. This, of course, is not so, and furthermore we are now concerned at the danger, particularly for adults, that too much butter is bad. Our concern about possible over-consumption of butterfat applies equally to margarine and hydrogenated vegetable fats in general. We think the dairy industry should concentrate on the products in which it has both economic and nutritional advantage, namely the non-fat part of milk.

As an economical producer of the best of proteins, accompanied by valuable supplies of vitamins and minerals in the non-fat part of milk, the dairy cow is unequalled, but she cannot compete economically in food fat; cottonseed, maize, soybean, peanut, and other oils are much cheaper to produce besides avoiding the cholesterol issue. Concentration by the dairy farmer on butterfat no longer makes good sense, and there are increasing signs that he is recognizing this fact. Jersey and Guernsey cows that produce milk of very high fat content are giving way to Friesian herds that produce more milk but with a lower fat content.

Mother's milk is the natural first food of the infant, and, judging from the usual period of lactation, it may be surmised that milk should form a major part of the diet for the first year or a little more. Further, there is much evidence that in the pre-school years and on to the age of puberty the child benefits from abundant milk, though cow's milk and human milk are not identical in composition. But at what age should we begin to be concerned about an excess of butterfat? Some authorities suggest restriction at all ages, particularly in the teens, because of the alarming amount of atherosclerosis found in the coronary arteries of young American soldiers killed in Korea.

We believe, awaiting better evidence, that the butterfat in whole milk can be consumed with impunity through the growing years. But there is no known advantage in a disproportionate consumption of butterfat at any age, so we doubt the wisdom of eating great quantities of butter even in childhood.

On the other hand, both for children and for adults, we urge the most liberal use of milk protein and of the whole non-fat part of milk. Skim milk, low fat, protein-filled milks, and plain cottage cheese should be used as much as possible, both as such and in cooking. If consumption of such items increases as we should like to see it, the dairy industry will increase and the British public will be better nourished. It is up to the industry, both at home and in the Commonwealth, to meet the challenge, not to oppose it. In our opinion, if skim milk and butter milk of good quality and flavour appeared on the British market, the producers might be astonished at the size of public demand.

Eggs

In a way, the egg started all this. For it was in the eggs fed to his experimental rabbits that Anitchkov found the cause of the surprising atherosclerosis they developed. And that was the begining of realization that cholesterol in the blood can be hard on the arteries. Egg yolks contain far more cholesterol than any other food you are likely to eat - unless you are one of the few persons who eats brains. But, as we have already pointed out, the cholesterol in your blood is what counts, and human beings, like carnivores in general and in contrast to rabbits and chickens, have a good mechanism for handling cholesterol ingested in food. Except possibly for some rare individuals who have built-in metabolic faults, we are not concerned about cholesterol in natural foods, at least in normal diets. Three or four eggs a day might be tolerable if we considered only the effect of the cholesterol contained in them.

But one egg yolk contains about five grammes of fat, and the question is what this means in terms of the promotion of cholesterol piling up in the blood and, independently, making the blood clot too easily. If the rest of the meal is reasonably "lean", five grammes of fat are not much to be concerned about. Moreover, though egg fat is certainly animal fat, the degree of saturation is usually not very great. We have to say "usually", because the kind of fat in the egg reflects the kind of fat in the hen's food. Feed suet to hens and the egg fat turns out to be almost as highly saturated - and a cause for limitation in the diet - as the suet itself. Eggs from chickens eating hemp seed, linseed, or sunflower seed should be almost as acceptable, cholesterol-wise, as most of the vegetable oils.

Some day, and not too long from now, either, it is probable you will be able to get eggs guaranteed to be low in saturated fat, rich in highly unsaturated fat. In the meantime the usual egg is not forbidden but an average of one a day should be enough, and two eggs and bacon for breakfast should be reserved for the 14-stone Rugby player or stevedore who needs 4,500 calories a day. If your blood cholesterol is really high (over 250 milligrammes per 100 millilitres), four eggs a week should be the limit. Six or even seven whole eggs a week are recommended if you can eat them and still keep your cholesterol under 220 milligrammes per 100 millitres. These egg counts are for all forms, not merely those you eat as such. Your egg limit will be determined by your blood analysis; you may be able to eat a dozen a week if you manage the rest of the diet properly and if you have a fortunate constitution.

Eggs are so useful in cooking, so full of good protein and vitamins, that we want you to have all you can eat with safety. Egg whites, of course, contain no fat and are full of first-class protein; eat all of them you want. It is too bad we cannot buy eggs with little yolks and big whites, but maybe the poultry breeders can do something about this too.