Life Change #8: I Use Whole Milk in my Coffee

I hate milk. It has been about 43 years since I last drank a glass of the stuff. I never liked it, and though I would never consider eating a bowl of cereal without milk poured over it, I am also the last guy in the world that would pick up that bowl, when the cereal is gone and drink the milk remainder. I’ll drink chocolate milk, but even that is not something I ever crave. Milk and I simply walk different roads.

That said, despite my love, no, need, for coffee to start each day, I could never drink that coffee were it not for milk. I have tried coffee black and much as I love it fully “polluted” that is how much I despise it “black”. Pity too, as I have this sense that it would be far better for me if I kept my coffee to two simple ingredients….water and ground up coffee beans.

When the advent of coffee houses really took control of our lives and there was one in every block, I began the bad habit of using half and half in my coffee….I mean it was so easy…the little thermoses with three kinds of creamers…it was so much richer, smoother and for some reason, it seemed right, when spending two bucks for a cup of coffee, that it be somehow more flavorful, more decadent, more unhealthy than what I would have at home.

Eventually I discovered something interesting: they sell half and half at the market. So the argument became, “if I have this at home, perhaps I will be less inclined to go out and buy coffee”, since I could get that great coffee house flavor at home. This will save me time, and money. Half and Half may be the cure to all of my problems.

Well….though I am no richer, and I surely did not put that time to good use, I am not sure that half and half was the panacea I was looking for. I am sure though, it raised my cholesterol. SO after a year or two of seeking half and half when making coffee, I down grade to simply whole milk…still laden with fat, to be sure, but without the whole cream to really insult any pretense of eating healthier. At first it seemed a bit less tasty, but I’d guess no more than a week went by before my taste buds had made the adjustment….so why not go all the way. Why not avoid those trips to the store to get whole milk, when in fact there is (almost always) 1% milk in the fridge, as a result of having two teenagers (and their friends) in the house. Hey, maybe THIS will save me time and money!

Of course, on day one, I am under whelmed. The first thing I notice is the color. Gone is that sort of tan color…the drink is clearly brown. And there is a thinness to the drink…I can sense the way that it hits my tongue and goes down my throat that there is something missing. That something, as it happens is called fat. Can fat really make that big a difference? What does fat taste like? Why do we miss it when it is gone, and deplore it when it is present? Why do we have to have phrases like “half the fat with all the flavor?” Are “fat” and “flavor” related in some strange way? Lemonade has no fat, and it has a lot of flavor.

Fat is a word that carries almost no good connotations. Unlike “sun” or “sunshine” which sound great but are apparently a grave danger, “fat” leaves almost no room for confusion. I am fat, and that is unhealthy. If I eat fat, I will get fat, and that is unhealthy. If I am fat, and want to get skinny, one way to do that is to eat less fat. And yet, fat seems to taste good. Fat seems to be present in large amounts in foods that we may crave…ice cream, t-bone steak, chicken wings, cheese, chocolate mousse, and of course, half and half and whole milk. Perhaps this leads to the phrase that seems to be the exception to the rule…”fat and happy”.

It seems as if many of the experiments to eliminate fat go awry in some manner. Margarine was thought to be a healthy alternative to butter, but it turns out that all the hydrogenated oil was even worse for you than the animal fat in butter. Non Dairy creamer uses those hydrogenated oils as well. Synthetic fat (no feel good words in that description) gives you the runs if you eat too much of it (or so I am told).

In the end though, some non fat foods are sure to make you lose weight. When we buy fat free cheese, as sometimes happens during a bout of health consciousness, fear or with swim suit season approaching, we find we eat far less of it because it tastes so bad. It is dry, melts poorly, and has no flavor. We are guaranteed to eat less cheese, at least until someone can get to the grocery store to buy some decent, fat laden cheese.

Low fat ice cream has some potential. I understand that they simply infuse the product with air, so the same volume has fewer calories, but I am willing to live with that illusion. I’d probably be willing to give low fat or non fat frozen yogurt a chance, but it hardly stands a chance when it has to sit in the same freezer as the ice creams, which offer a dizzying array of flavors like “Butterfinger Almond Mocha Crunch with Fudge Swirls. Yogurt offers “Chocolate”. That is not even a fair fight.

Even buying super lean ground beef is unsatisfying. A burger made of this ostensibly healthy product falls apart on the grill, and typically comes out dry and mealy. Again, as a weight loss food, not a bad concept, but if you are actually hungry….

So what is this stuff, fat? It adds flavor, adds texture and binds things together, it creates a sense of richness, of thickness. It clogs our arteries and kills us, slowly. It seems essentially irreplaceable as no great options have appeared in the marketplace. And yet despite all it seems to do, it still has a very bad reputation (probably the “kills us slowly” part). Fat is in need of a good agent, or perhaps a council. Like the folks that try to get us to drink more milk (Got Milk?) or the folks that want us to eat more pork (the other white meat?). The Fat Council; or perhaps the American Fat Association. Definitely need someone to spruce up the image. Take care of that pesky artery clogging thing as well….

The milk that I will use in my coffee now is called “low fat milk”. But they do not call the stuff I used to use “High Fat milk” or “full fat milk” they call it “whole milk” or simply “milk”. Whole milk is either clever branding or very devious. “Whole” brings to mind words like “wholesome” implying healthy, and the word “whole” seems to imply that something valuable is missing from the low or non fat versions. The something is called “fat”. And yet, if you are a “whole person”, that means you are well rounded, and it does not mean you are fat (though you may be anyway since a large portion of Americans seem to be); and if you get the “whole enchilada”, well I guess that includes generous sauce over the top.

For now, and given my family history, I think I will seek to trim the fat wherever possible. The one thing I do everyday is to drink coffee, and as it stands now, that means drinking it with milk laden with fat. If I cut that to low fat milk, then it seems a positive step towards cutting my fat consumption, and until they get a council to convince me otherwise, I will consider that a good thing.
I
am also unsure if I should make the switch to 1% milk, which is in plentiful supply around my house, or bite the bullet and drop all the way to skim milk, which has zero fat, but offers the same lack of convenience as half and half and whole milk. Ina week or so, after my taste buds have grudgingly accepted the change, I can look forward to never having to adjust again (the only thing left, I suppose, would be to add water to my coffee, and frankly, that seems unfulfilling)…besides, I get a little calcium if I add milk, whole or skim. And I am told we need some of that.

Update on Previous Life Changes (Day Eight):

As I enter the second week of my little self improvement project, I note that many of the earlier Life Changes are already integrated into my life. I have found time to exercise, and it has not been a struggle to do so…Today, I expanded both the duration as well as the degree of difficulty, and it felt right. In fact, I noticed my heart rate did not climb as high, and I recovered much more quickly than I had initially. I will not say that I am in good shape yet, but after only a week of conditioning, my body is changing…soon, I hope, it will be shrinking a bit, but it is nice to detect things happening, even if they are invisible to the outside world.