My brother’s biggest grievance when he went to an American college was the tragic absence of whole milk.  His dormitory provided students with a sampling of milks to choose from – 2%, skim and non-fat, but whole milk was noticeably absent. All these pretender species of milk were both tasteless and heretical to my brother.

I am quite the opposite of my milk afficionado of a younger brother. My mildly-lactose-intolerant-self refused dairy of all kinds since birth. I was raised on a combination of apple juice and water. But even so, I fully sympathised with him. Because I like milk – when it doesn’t taste like milk, that is.

I enjoy milk when used as a vehicle for other flavours. I may not enjoy a bowl of cold milk and crispy cereal, but I enjoy a trickle of whiteness clouding my morning tea, lending it richness and tempering the bitterness of tea leaves. I occasionally stand over a saucepan-full of sugared milk, stirring it gently whilst dropping in chunks of robust dark chocolate for the perfect hot chocolate drink. Or drizzling a vanilla-scented jug of it into a bowl of egg yolks to make crème anglaise. Fat is flavour.

When done right, we are able to get along, milk and I.

But to me, the greatest sadness of all is that whole milk is the healthiest milk you can drink. Full cream milk sounds like something clean and delicious to my mind, but to others it is a terror to be avoided. But the fact of the matter is that full cream milk only has 3% fat. At most.

That’s 1% more than 2% milk, and 100% more flavour.

There are a million other foods that have more fat than that. Chicken breast, for example. Avocados. Salmon. Olives. Do I really need to continue? A glass or two of whole milk a day is vastly unlikely to be the cause of weight gain or the clogging of arteries.

The whole in whole milk should stand for wholesome. Besides the insignificant amount of difference between whole and reduced/non-fat milk, whole milk is also the least processed form of milk. It doesn’t have to go through the extra treatment needed to remove that 1% (or 3% if you will) of fat that also happens to strip the milk of its fat soluble vitamins, i.e. vitamins A, D, E and K. Non or low fat milk also contains additives – the ‘milk solids’ on the ingredients label, if you will, to make the milk have the same whiteness of whole milk.

Whole milk is less processed, extremely low fat, and better-tasting.

And the truth is, we all need some fat in our body. It protects our organs and aids nutrient absorption, among other things. Our brain is comprised of 66% fat, for goodness sakes.

Also, it’s really tasty.