The fats of life come full circle

By Will Verboven

February 25, 2006 -- One of the inexact sciences that affects consumers in different ways is food nutrition science. That may seem like a topic that only fascinates dieticians and self-appointed health lobby groups, but nutrition and diet information is big business. The problem is the poor consumer no longer knows what to believe and at times tends to vote with their stomach much to the dismay of the diet lobby industry. This is certainly the case with fat in the human diet.

So called fatty foods have been demonized by the health industry and busybody government health experts for over 40 years. That long anti-fat campaign has had a profound effect on how food animals are raised for meat and dairy products - the alleged sources of all that bad fat that is supposed to be killing the human race - well at least in the overfed western world.

But now it seems fat is no longer as bad as it once was particularly since the discovery that all fat is not created equal. Fat used to be well - just fat, but no longer. We now have transfats, saturated fats, polyunsaturated fats, good cholesterol, bad cholesterol and on it goes.

At one time butter was declared the root of all evil and the sooner consumers switched to margarine the better. Then we find out years later that butter wasn't so bad after all because margarine was found to be the source of deadly transfats. That change in the world of fat has had a profound effect on the dairy industry in Canada.

At a recent visit to the dairy farm of Tony and Susan Vandenberg of Smithers BC, I found out that milk producers can now be penalized for not producing enough fat in the milk they sell to dairy processors. That seemed rather odd being that it was not too long ago that milk producers were penalized for producing too much fat in the milk they sold. So what gives?

Perhaps it can be attributed to consumer confusion about good and bad fats and that they are voting with their taste buds and buying more butter and cheese - the production of which requires more butterfat in milk. Perhaps it's because of the confusing message diet books present to naïve consumers about fats, proteins and carbohydrates. Consumers may well be deciding for themselves what is good and bad food. From that aspect dairy products do have a much more wholesome image that consumers can relate to - words like poly and trans do have a synthetic perception.

All of this has presented milk producers with a production problem that is costing them money. Extra fat is not easy to produce particularly since most dairy cattle are of a Dutch breed called Holstein-Friesian - renowned for producing large quantities of low fat milk.

It's not just milk producers that are affected by the changing consumer perception of fat. Beef cattle producers went through a similar exercise beginning about 30 years ago. Back then lean beef was all the rage and less fat was deemed to be the wave of the future for cattle producers. But consumers and export markets didn't share that enthusiasm about less fat.

Nonetheless the Canadian beef cattle changed its quality grading system to encourage the production of lean beef and cattle were imported from Europe that produced leaner beef. However, although the health benefits of lean meat were much promoted those in the restaurant business found that consumers preferred the more tender flavorful, fat-laden beef cuts over lean cuts.

To the chagrin of lean beef promoters the Canadian foodservice industry began importing fat-laden beef cuts from the USA. Same for the Japanese market where beef marbled with white fat was the premium product. To maintain those markets the Canadian beef industry had to go back to the future and feed cattle that produced the fat marbled beef that consumers really wanted.

So the matter of fats in the dairy and beef industry has gone full circle from too much to too little and back again. It does prove one thing - the market and consumer are always right and no amount of nutritionists fear mongering about fat can change that reality.