My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard and they’re like, “it’s 60% fat anyway stupid”.

Amongst your usual 21st century fads including the usual scam diets and decaffinated beverages, exists a type of product existing only to further chisel away at more of life’s small pleasures. The slow demise of normal or “full fat” products is one being spearheaded by some major companies to ensure the dollars keep flowing for watered down products from those that are suddenly “health conscious” in 2010. Everything has “reduced fat” or “no fat” or even just “natural fat” now. What they also don’t advertise on the box of whatever horrible unworkable product you are now buying, is that the taste has also gone out with the fat. If only the packaging was as bland as the product inside most of the time. Like internet popup ads and ads in the newspapers, I avoid low fat products just the same. My mind immediately discounts them and I skip over them with ease.

Fat is everything, especially in dairy. You can’t possibly sit there and tell me you would enjoy a lowfat yogurt ice cream, seeing as I recently bought a box of those by accident and hence they are still sitting in the freezer. They are horrible and have no taste! Their normal-fat sister product on the other hand, is quite nice. NO COINCIDENCE THERE.

Just think, all of those fractions of a percent of fat saved with your terrible purchase could have you looking like this (after a very very long time)!

While it is good that people are finally getting their shit together on the knowledge of what’s good and what’s bad for them, I’m increasingly finding that there is a certain irony in peoples’ choices. It’s one thing to eat lots of veges, have a healthy diet and all that bullshit; but its entirely another to have a bad product because you chose it’s low fat cousin over the regular, more enjoyable version. If you’re going to have the “bad things” at all, why would you choose the awful bads? Some sort of punishment to remind yourself why you shouldn’t eat them? Just buy the real ones for god sake and enjoy something in your life. Who cares if you have to run for another 5 minutes to burn it off, that should be your punishment. You were already running, so what’s the big deal?

The most entertaining part of the whole “low fat” saga to me is in coffees. Given that I’m still working hospitality, I do actually know how to use a coffee machine and hence make people coffees. While I have discussed the ‘decaf-skim-milk Equal-sugar substitute coffee’ variety before, what I haven’t talked about is the skim milk part.

That’s right. FULL CREAM.

I get it man, you know? Every little thing you do with your everyday diet and meal structure helps you keep those love handles at bay, sure, right. Well guess what? IF YOU ASK FOR SKIM MILK YOU ARE PROBABLY GETTING FULL CREAM. That’s right, just when you thought that 20ml of milk in your cappachino was skim – it’s full cream at least 90% of the time! Ignore the fact that it still has a shitload of normal drinking chocolate (CHOCK FULL OF FAT) sprinkled on top, regardless of the fact you asked for skim to “keep the weight off”. Infact, I make sure I put more chocolate on top of the ones that asked for skim.

Mmmm yeah, take that fat content! TASTES GOOD DOESN’T IT!?

And just before all of you skim milk drinking souls recoil in horror at the full cream coffees I’ve been churning out for a long time now, take in this fact – even at normal coffee shops, it’s probably full cream milk as well! You know why? Because you can’t tell the difference and there is no reason for anyone to drink skim over full cream. NONE. Lactose intolerance still means you’re just as lactose intolerant drinking skim. All it does is make your coffee taste like water. Putting skim in your coffee is as stupid as asking for a Diet Coke with your Big Mac at McDonalds, under the guise of it being “more healthy”. Pretty sure that fat contents not getting levelled out in that equation.

At the end of the day, the whole idea of a low fat variety of something is merely a marketing gimmick to make you feel better about yourself, while paying more for an inferior version of whatever product it is that you perceived as bad. Most of the time I imagine the actual health benefits are negligible anyway. You most certainly aren’t getting fatter because I used full cream over skim in your god damn coffee either.