Letter: Fats, like that in whole milk, are good for you

Editor:

One evening, as I was strolling through my house, I heard a commentator on the news, saying he was going to have a presenter on his program to talk about the unpopular dietary guidelines being forced on our children in school.

I said to myself, ‘Can that be anyone but author Nina Teicholz?’ And in a few minutes, Nina Teicholz was on TV, getting national attention, and explaining that the dietary guidelines were incorrect, and that food with some fat in it is good for you. Teicholz realized that these dietary guidelines, now in effect for four years, are not beneficial to children, consumers and farmers, and illustrated how whole milk sales have dropped 79 percent.

I read Teicholz’s book, The Big Fat Surprise, after a member of the Progressive Agriculture Organization sent the book to me. As I read this book, which took Nina nine years to write, I was surprised to read the tremendous amount of scientific references she used to support her writings.

Unfortunately, it appears that many farm organizations and members of the press have been very slow in picking up on Teicholz’s work, although the American Dairy Association has published a page on her work.

Pro-Ag has been leading the fight to make her work more well known. For five years, we have been handing out thousands of flyers, proclaiming Teicholz’s work and getting the facts out about it being OK to drink whole milk and use real butter.

In addition, we have encouraged school boards to pass resolutions supporting the need of getting whole milk back in our schools, and we have gone into schools demonstrating the need for whole milk, and believe you me, our students do want whole milk back in our schools.

Arden Tewksbury
Meshoppen, Pennsylvania
(The author is also manager of Pro-Ag.)