Scrap ban on full-fat milk in schools to help fight obesity

MINISTERS’ ‘idiotic’ ban on full-fat milk for school pupils should be scrapped, say experts, after a study showed it can actually help fight childhood obesity.

Education Secretary John Swinney is upholding the policy, claiming full-fat milk causes weight gain.

But a US study suggests that, in fact, it can help prevent youngsters piling on the pounds.

The findings come after the Scottish Daily Mail told how an award-winning Scots island dairy was stopped from supplying whole milk to schoolchildren.

Don and Emma Dennis’s firm on Gigha was even advised by Mr Swinney to get a grant to start producing semi-skimmed. The local primary is having to import milk from the mainland.

Last night, Mr Dennis, 61, said: ‘The Scottish Government policy is idiocy. Not only is it based on no evidence at all, it now seems it is achieving the exact opposite of what they set out to do.

‘Talk to the pig farmers; they give skimmed milk to their animals so they stay hungry and gobble up more grain.

‘We are treating children like pigs and fattening them up.’

Academics from the University of California studied the diets and lifestyles of children most prone to obesity.

They found those who drank fullfat milk, regardless of their daily calorie count, were significantly less likely to be severely obese.

Researchers scrutinised the habits of 145 three-year-olds and found that 92 per cent drank milk but those with the lower Body Mass Index (BMI) drank more and their preferred type was more likely to be full-fat.

Lower-weight children typically consumed 68 per cent more milk fat than those with major problems – and those that had the most were 11 per cent less likely to be severely obese.

Last night, Robert Brown, of the nutrition think tank the McCarrison Society, added: ‘Whatever is causing obesity and cardiovascular disease in Scotland, it is not whole milk. This ban deserves to be reviewed.

‘Traditionally, Scottish highlanders – backbone of the army’s highland regiments – mixed cattle blood with dairy products and oats. They were healthy and robust.

‘The real obesity culprits, the biology suggests, are the overprocessing of food combined with too much polyunsaturated fats, such as in sunflower and rapeseed oils, particularly once oxidised during frying.’

The Dennis’ Wee Isle Dairy was approached by the island primary school to supply 15 litres a week for its 18 pupils.

But officials at Argyll and Bute Council stepped in, pointing to Scottish Government rules that state school children should only be given skimmed or semiskimmed milk.

A Scottish Government spokesman said the ban on whole milk remains but said a working group was examining the latest study results and would report to ministers before the end of the year.

‘Deserves to be reviewed’