Correcting the balance

A recent television show on the BBC gave a humourous take on the subject of E numbers. I found it quite enlightening, even as a member of the food industry. We discovered what makes ice cream not crystallise even after being brought out and back into the freezer. It was quite a fascinating show.

What I thought was particularly relevant was the part about sweeteners. They found that the mind actually works to compensate for sweeteners not providing calories, and makes up for it by prodding the person to consume more food instead. It is a very interesting field of science – see our article in the upcoming issue of Dairy Industries on what the industry has in store for lower calorie dairy.

I went to the Dairy UK conference in Birmingham recently (and even sat on a panel of journalists for one session. Thank you, attendees, for not pointing and laughing at me). The UK dairy industry is emerging from a long period of hibernation, I feel. Over the past ten years, the anti-dairy groups have had the upper hand with their negative comments and publicity about how bad dairy is for you.

Now, the balance is being corrected with the Make Mine Milk campaign, as well as the new Milk in Action campaign targeted at children and teenagers.

Dairy has a positive news story to tell people about itself – it is loaded with nutrition and good for you. It is more than high time to get the word out, and the folk at Dairy UK and the Dairy Council are doing just that.

In the UK, we are also lucky in that there has been a concerted effort by media and celebrity chefs (ie, Jamie Oliver) and by the government to push the idea that healthy food such as dairy is important in the British diet.

In particular, we must reach those people who choose fizzy drinks over milk.

The stakes are high – if we fail, we wind up like the US. I am amazed at how large a significant portion of that country has gotten in the 12 years I’ve lived in the UK. It used to be that being obese was the exception. Something is seriously rotten over there. The timebomb that is obesity is going to go off with devastating consequences for all of society if we don’t get the message across.