Row as Scots whole milk champions are advised to convert to semi-skimmed by minister

The firm, based on the Isle of Gigha, claims the current guidelines are outdated and nutritional advice on the benefits of whole milk has changed in the last decade.

Dairy owner Don Dennis had written to Education Secretary John Swinney urging a rethink of the milk policy to enable children on the island to drink local produce rather than imports from Stirlingshire.

But Mr Swinney said the move to semi-skimmed in schools was an attempt to "reduce the amount of fat and saturated fat children consume"and had been important step in trying to reduce "high proportion of children at risk of becoming overweight or obese".

In a letter to the dairy owner, the senior minister also suggested applying for grants to acquire apparatus "to process milk from full -fat to semi-skimmed".

He added: "I would like to reassure your constituents that the Scottish Government remains committed to increasing local procurement.

“Significant progress has been made in recent years with almost half of our public sector food and drink contracts now awarded to Scottish businesses.

“We want to see more of our schools, hospitals and public sector organisations taking advantage of the high quality food and drink produced in Scotland and will continue to support them to do so wherever appropriate and possible."

But Mr Dennis said the government is "missing the point altogether" and stressed that major new studies – in particular Canadian research published last year in the American Journal Of Clinical Nutrition – showed children who drank whole milk had fewer weight issues than whose who drank skimmed.

Children drinking whole milk also showed higher levels of vitamin D.

"If the evidence is to be believed then some skimmed milk actually fosters childhood obesity," he said.

"They are not permitted to have whole milk at school and that is absurd, ridiculous and bad for their health.”

And Mr Dennis added: "The bizarre thing is that by having this UK-wide policy to help protect against the development of childhood obesity, it is actually, according to evidence, fostering childhood obesity.

"It then ends up with this situation where we have to import to our island semi-skimmed milk that comes from cows in Stirlingshire that sits in a shed for 10 or 12 hours then comes over and is fed to our children on the island when there is perfectly good whole milk available here."

The approach had been made to Mr Swinney through local MSP Mike Russell.

Mr Russell wrote that the locally produced milk would be fresher and supplied in recyclable bottles.

"The refusal to use a local supplier also flies in the face of encouragement the Scottish Government has given to local food industries and to local procurement," he wrote.

"I write therefore to ask you to get the relevant officials to contact Argyll & Bute Council – whose chief executive  I am also copying in to this email – in order to find a resolution that allows Don [Dennis] and [his wife] Emma to supply milk to the school on Gigha, which would be the commons sense approach."

Under the guide to implementing the nutritional requirements for food and drink in schools (Scotland) regulations 2008, the only drinks permitted in schools are water, skimmed, semi-skimmed milk and other lower fat milks, milk drinks and drinking yoghurts, soya, rice or oat drinks enriched with calcium, tea and coffee, and fruit juices and vegetable juices.

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “Semi-skimmed milk is proven to have the benefits of full-fat milk, including high levels of calcium, with much lower levels of fat.

“The Scottish Government sets nutritional standards for local authorities to ensure pupils are offered balanced and nutritious food and drink in schools, this includes guidelines recommending the serving of skimmed or semi-skimmed milk only.”

Semi-skimmed: why bother?

Analysis by Dr Carrie Ruxton, dietitian

Given that a glass of full cream milk is only 28 calories more than a glass of semi-skimmed, you might ask ‘why bother?’ The answer is that fixing the obesity crisis in Scotland will be achieved with many small steps, not one big bang approach to diet.

There’s no single food to blame for obesity, cancer or heart disease. Rather, it’s a combination of poor diet choices across the day which give Scots, especially those at high school, one of the worst diets in Europe. A typical day can be sugary breakfast cereal, chips with curry sauce at lunchtime, sweets after school washed down with fizzy drinks, then pizza at night.

Choosing lower fat milk might seem insignificant but it’s a step towards a reduced saturated fat diet and encourages taste preferences for lower fat foods and drinks. Dairy products provide around a quarter of our saturated fat intakes daily1 so each glass of semi-skimmed milk saves more than 2g of saturated fat; just over 10% of a child’s recommended limit2.

Of course, we hear from some commentators that saturated fat is harmless and we should eat lots of butter. However, that opinion is based on flawed evidence since controlled studies show that saturated fats promote inflammation which is bad news for heart health and type 2 diabetes. We’ll have a fuller understanding when the UK’s expert diet committee, SACN, publishes its review on saturated fats, possibly next year3.

In the meantime, let’s encourage children from their pre-school years onwards to get a taste for lower fat foods and drinks, as well as wholegrains, fruits, vegetables and tap water. A step-by-step approach to improving the Scottish diet will be well worth the effort, with success measured in years of better health for all.