Health Promotion International, Vol. 4, No. 4, 277-280, 1989
© Oxford University Press 1989
research-article |
Policies to reduce the consumption of fat in milk
National Institute of Public Health Geitmyrsveien 75, 0462 Oslo 4, Norway Norwegian School of Agriculture 1430 Ås Norway As a contribution to preventing coronary heart disease, Norwegian authorities are aiming at reducing the proportion of fat in total calorie intake from a current 35% to 30%. Fat from milk contributes 30% to fat consumption. Substituting low-cream milk for full-cream milk probably leads to little loss of pleasure among consumers and therefore constitutes an attractive goal for public policy. Extracted surplus fat that cannot be disposed of in a useful way should be regarded as any other residual product and be dumped rather than rechannelled to consumers through for instance butter or cheese. Substituting low-fat milk for full-cream milk leads to a loss of calorie intake that in part must be compensated for. Also, low-cream milk production is more costly than full-cream milk production due to higher requirements of cow milk and additional cream extraction costs. Altogether, complete replacement of full-cream milk by low-fat milk in Norway would lead to a cost increase corresponding to 2–4% of present production costs for consumer milk. Of the increase 25–50% could be recovered by putting surplus fat to alternative uses, leaving the Norwegian economy with a net annual cost increase corresponding to 12–25 kroner per capita. The benefit would be a reduction in the share of fat in calorie intake from a present 35% to 33.5%.