Acti-Veg

It is part of the wider restructuring of the US food pyramid, and its elevated importance of ‘healthy fats’ and protein compared with the Obama-era food guidance. Whole milk has more fat than any kind of skimmed milk, so that is the logic on the nutrition side of things.

Beneath that though, whole milk has cultural significance for Trump and the MAGA crowd. It is often framed and thought of as ‘real,’ 'pure’ and ‘traditional.’ Milk have always had this really strange symbolism for the far right, associated with purity realness; I’ve not been able to put my finger on precisely where that comes from.

There is also the fact that Trump promised American dairy farmers he would help them, and so far most of his policies have hurt small farmers in the US. We also know that this is something that RFK Jr. has been getting excited about, with his recent endorsement of raw milk, despite quite a lot of people dying from pathogens carried in raw milk before the ban finally came into place in the late 80’s.

There is really no health argument for this, but like so much with RFK Jr. it is about the cultural signal he wants to send rather than science, it is about purity, about 'all American’ values and a return to foods he thinks of as the kind of things that Real Americans™ should be eating.

I don’t really understand what it is about just heating up milk for a few seconds to kill pathogens that makes it 'impure’ whereas selective breeding, factory farming and copious amounts of antibiotics seem to be just swell… But there is really no logic to where they put that arbitrary line. This is an administration whose health policies very much based on vibes.

I haven’t seen this mentioned in coverage on the change, but the return of whole milk to school cafeterias also has a pretty substantial profit motive, and animal agriculture industries wield a lot of lobbying power in Washington. I can make an educated guess that this was part of it, too, as a concession to a lobby that Trump has largely been disappointing with his domestic and global policies so far.