Dairy Products Taste Delicious—Actually the Additives Do
The National Dairy Council refers to their products as “Nutritious and Delicious.” Undoubtedly, consumers love ice cream, cheese, yogurt, and butter. But the reason is, they are loaded with sugar and salt; otherwise no one would eat them. The National Dairy Council knows the importance of adding sugar and other flavorings, reporting, “Studies show that elementary school kids drink 28 percent more milk when offered in “cool” flavors and packages.”1 When I was a child, my school required all students to drink milk daily. A small carton of white milk was 2 cents and chocolate was 3 cents. I always splurged, because I gagged from the taste of white milk. The reason plain milk is at all palatable is because it naturally contains about 30% of its calories as sugar (lactose). Chocolate, strawberry, and other flavored milks contain additional sugar. The more sugar, the greater the attraction to dairy; witness ice cream with 52% of the calories as sugar.
My patients taught me how really disgusting basic dairy foods taste. During my residence training in the mid-1970s, I cared for people with kidney failure, who were required to be on very salt-restricted diets. One of my duties was to recommend they eat salt-less butter and salt-less cheese. Their response was, “Doc, I can’t eat a glob of greasy lard.” Without the salt, these yellow blocks of fat are unpalatable.