Udder nonsense

Remember when chocolate was bad? And wasn't there a time when one egg a week was not only sufficient but bordering on a tad too much? Did you ever wonder who promoted this stuff in the first place and then changed their minds?

The same might be said of milk. Somewhere along the way we've been conditioned that skim or skinny milk, no fat, low fat, is best. You only have to stand in line at a cafe and hear an ordering mantra in operation. It's like a fever.

Now school milk is on the come-back and in Northland first. News reports quote the principal of the first school to receive the milk in the pilot scheme as being 'excited'. As milk monitors make a return a local health official says milk is 'vital for development, providing essential energy, protein and fats' while, hardly surprisingly, Fonterra's CEO wants to do all he can to 'ensure New Zealand children grow up drinking milk because it's good for them.'

It's as if Northland kids have never experienced milk before. But they're being cautious with the delivery and placatory towards the kids. Cartons of long-life, reduced fat milk will be delivered every few days and stored in a refrigerator supplied by the sponsor. There are still many who remember drinking sun-drenched milk from pure glass bottles stored in crates on a sunny courtyard so refrigeration and cartons are a modern concession to our off-spring. And, perversely, both are more detrimental to the environment.

There are those who remember lying on their backs near a cow's udder and having a sibling squirt unpasteurised, non homogenised, unsterilised milk direct into your open mouth. But these are different days. The kids in the new milk scheme can take the cartons to their desks like they do their water bottles so 'it's not a rushed initiative''. You can't even do that on the Northliner bus.

Is milk really good for us or udderly bad? Are we gluttons for potential health punishment in wanting full-strength milk-the dreaded fatty milk? It's not hard to find a study-or two or three thousand-that staunchly advocate a non-dairy diet and promote the likes of rice, soy and almond milk as 'natural' alternatives. Then again there are other equally numerous published studies that dictate totally otherwise and say go the whole hog, or cow actually, and drink as much milk as you like.

It may be well to remember what our grandmothers were always telling us-moderation in all things is key.