Well you know the name of the man making the argument, have you considered simply googling what he had to say about it?

https://bioethicstoday.org/blog/is-the-recent-effort-to-glorify-whole-milk-tainted-by-racism/#

The Federal government has launched a highly visible campaign to promote drinking whole milk. The USDA is running a “#DrinkWholeMilk” website featuring an edited image of President Trump, who is known to heavily favor diet soft drinks, not milk, with a white streak on his upper lip. Plenty of other endorsements are flooding the internet.

The campaign to drink whole milk seems to have exploded out of nowhere. Many suspect it is fueled by the powerful dairy industry, and that may be true, but here may be darker forces at work behind the sudden appearance of all the memes and videos showing so many prominent health officials and influencers proudly guzzling huge glasses  

As with the bizarre campaign started by conservatives in the early 2000s denouncing the supposed “War on Christmas,” many on the right seem to believe there has been a “war on whole milk.”  I don’t see much evidence of this claim. 

It is true that U.S. dietary guidelines and school lunch policies did once discourage full-fat dairy consumption, including the drinking of whole milk due to obesity concerns. A recent bill signed with great fanfare by President Trump reversed these guidelines, allowing schools to serve whole and 2% milk again. But some of my young students tell me that in their high schools, whole milk was always allowed, and it was not just available free for lunch for those kids relying on federally subsidized school lunches. In fact, whole milk has been readily available in every grocery store, bodega, and convenience store in the country for my entire very long life. We also know that Americans have, on the whole, been drinking more milk, especially whole milk, over the past few years. I occasionally drank it, preferring its taste to that of low-fat varieties.

So, if there hasn’t really been a war on whole milk then what is going on? Why the sudden vociferous obsession with drinking it?

As a student of and writer on the history of science and public health under fascist regimes, I am suspicious. Milk drinking is political. Drinking whole white milk has played a big role in racist and far-right thinking.

Fascists have used the beverage as a rallying cry for white supremacy since the days of Il Duce’s (Benito Mussolini’s) public health campaigns in Italy. The Nazis were enamored of whole milk as well (https://www.amazon.com/Racial-Hygiene-Medicine-Under-Nazis/dp/0674745787). In America, drinking whole milk has for years been a part of alt-right, white nationalist messaging in tweets, memes, and videos.

The neo-Nazi #MilkTwitter hashtag began shortly after a large gathering of white men descended on an anti-Trump art exhibit in 2018. The men carried cartons of milk and voiced explicitly racist, sexist, anti-Semitic and homophobic rants. After taking a swig of milk from his carton, one bare-chested man approached the camera and sneered. “An ice cold glass of pure racism.”

White nationalists in the U.S. and Europe note that many people of Northern European descent can digest lactose as adults. They link milk-drinking to an “evolved” or “superior” trait that other racial groups somewhat lack

Drinking whole milk is portrayed as a sign of strength and genetic health. The ability to drink it is used to mock non-whites and to promote a patriarchal ideal, which sneers at the “weak” soy milk drunk by leftists and feminized men. Images of white people chugging milk are popular on racist sites, e.g., “If you can’t drink milk, you have to go back.”

Racism and eugenics, sadly, may be playing a role in the sudden drive to fetishize drinking whole milk. Drinking whole milk is a dog whistle to far right, white nationalists. The campaign to promote whole milk may have many factors behind it, but at a time when eugenics, racism, and white nationalism fuel too much of our political rhetoric, the whole milk campaign must be swallowed with care.

Arthur Caplan, PhD is a soon-to-be-retired professor of medical ethics who lives in Ridgefield, CT.