Let's Talk: Low-Fat Milk

In the comments to the chocolate pudding post, Heather brought up a very interesting question about low-fat milk. (If you want to see the original comment, check it out at the end of the post here.) It was so well put (and so well timed) that I thought perhaps it deserved its own discussion.

To start us off, let me make this confession: I am no fat phobe.

As you may know from reading REAL FOOD HAS CURVES, the research is pretty solid: food has got to taste like something for it to register any satiety cues in the brain. You'll never see anyone canola-oiling their bread. Butter is just too darn tasty!

Furthermore, fats are necessary for life: for building neural structures, for aiding in proper digestion. You also can't absorb a host of vitamins (A and D, for example) without fat because the molecules themselves are fat soluble.

That all said, there's no doubt that we eat too many tasteless fats in the modern world. This is our story: something we need is then processed into copious supply, processed into oblivion, and then we eat more and more and more.

So our research-based equation--that fat = satiety--doesn't necessarily mean we should be downing a vat of walnut oil or duck fat. (Although. . . .) It means we shouldn't be afraid of tasty fats; they should form the basis of our food.

Still, Bruce and I have put low-fat milk solidly in the "real food" category in our book. Yes, some processing has been done to it. But hasn't it been done to almost all milk? I mean, of course, the pasteurizing that keeps us safe.

I'd love your take on it all. Is low-fat milk "real food"? If drunk on its own--or, say, poured on Bruce's granola which you can find here--whole milk is pretty darn fine. But if it's put in another dish--like that chocolate pudding--that already has lots of tasty fat (the cocoa butter in the chocolate, the four egg yolks), is not low-fat milk an acceptable way to find a balance between taste and calorie intake? Or should we go whole hog for the real thing, for whole milk at every turn? 

Everything-But-The-Kitchen-Sink Chocolate Chip Cookies

OK, that's my world right now. Or more specifically, my backyard. It's been raining for days. The snow is giving way to rank ugliness. It looks as if we're going to have an early spring in this part of New England, up here in the iron-cold dark where Calvinists sprang full formed from the ground.

Mostly, it means the brook behind our house is flooding, filling the meadows with water. Not a bad thing, mind you. I'll be glad of it come July when the wildflowers flourish. But right now, it just means mud. And lots of it.

So it's a good day to stay inside and make cookies. The kind that empty the pantry: maple syrup, coconut, wheat germ, tahini, oats, chocolate chips.

Wow, are they good! Pour yourself a glass of milk. Whole milk. I mean, what's the point of low-fat? You saved, what?, thirty calories? Really? That's going to save the world? Listen, if you're going to make these cookies, go for broke.

But before we get to the recipe, a confession. (It is Lent, after all.) I like crunchy cookies. Period. I'm not a soft-cookie guy. Yes, I learned to like a few of the gooey ones for our chocolate cookie book. But mostly, I'm all about the crunch. Because I'm all about the dunk. You realize we're back to the milk discussion, right?

OK, Let's get started.

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