Gen Z finally discovers the hard stuff: full-fat milk

Frightful news from Waitrose. Apparently the oldies, shifting slowly down the dairy aisles to get their mitts on some good old-fashioned full-fat milk, are being elbowed out of the way by the young.

The Telegraph, investigating the matter last week, dispatched a reporter to a branch. There she found a despondent elderly gent looking forlornly at an empty shelf. “They buy it as soon as it comes in,” he said, before displaying extraordinary media insight. “They’ve found out about it on TikTok, that video thing,” he added.

Indeed the stats back him up. Sales of whole milk are up 2 per cent year on year, which represents millions of litres of milk, and is in line with a similar trend of younger people, reported by Waitrose, of switching from low-fat to full-fat dairy products in 2023.

The great persuader (which is a better term than influencer, by the way) is apparently Bobby Parrish, who calls himself The Grocery Guy and appears on TikTok (@bobbyparrish), and who has been preaching that “if

This news is promising. It shows they are on a trajectory to common sense, a pathway even, from Left to Right

you’re buying fat-free milk you are doing yourself an injustice, because if it’s good quality dairy what lives in the fat? Omega-3 fatty acids.” And Gen Zs apparently like Omega 3, quite why I’m unsure, but maybe it’s because they think it makes them more irritating. After all, omega-3 helps the cells in one’s body function. And if you’re functioning you can make a better fist at being annoying.

But, apart from the downsides of denying old people their vitamins, the news that Gen Zs are lapping up full-fat milk is good. It’s promising. It shows that they are on a trajectory to common sense, a pathway even, as the magnificent Holly Valance recently reminded us, from Left to Right. As she put it: “Everyone starts off as a Leftie and then wakes up at some point… and realises what crap ideas they all are. And then you go to the Right.”

So perhaps the first step in this vital journey is a sip of full-fat milk. After this exciting news, I need a long, cool glass of milk. If the Gen Zs have been good enough to leave me some.