h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've been struggling with skimmed milk here (Hong Kong) for a couple of years and was therefore very intrigued to read your post in the Diet Coke thread. Where can I find out more about this, or can I just take your word for it and go back to drinking something with taste on the breakfast cereal?

I don't know the exact details I'm afraid W but I'm pretty sure I've read in various places that for a product to be deemed "low fat" it should have less than 4% fat. Whole Milk has (just checked!) 3.6 grams of fat per 100 grams of milk (i.e. 3.6%) and is therefore considered low fat ...

There was a study that came out quite recently that showed that various diets were proven to be more effective if the dieter drank a serving of whole milk. Our bodies need fat as a source of energy and also there are various vitamins that require fat to help them be absorbed.

Personally, being of the live to eat variety, and someone who loves food but at the same time leads a fairly active life, I've never felt the need or indeed the urge to "diet" or "lite" anything ... semi-skimmed milk is pretty tasteless, skimmed milk is just water with essence of white ...

I tried to find something more concrete than scramblings of my increasingly cluttered mind ... only useful thing I could find was that "On average, whole milk contains 4 per cent fat, semi-skimmed 1.7 per cent and skimmed only 0.1 per cent. The Guideline Daily Amount* for fat intake for women is 70g per day and 95g for men. Milk only supplies around eight percent of the fat in the British diet. Therefore milk is not a major contributor to fat intake."

Personally I wouldn't drink anything other than full fat, even if I was paid ... it's just too good!

Make of it what you will W ...

Thank you so much for the prompt reply. I'm diabetic. So the diet coke is an occasional treat. The general dietary rules for people like me (overweight) are 'cut the fat down". Fat free yoghurt is fine but skimmed milk is impossible. So I've been eating more bread (bad)and less porridge (good)