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It's Been a Minute

Don't get got by big MILK

23 Mar 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 8.386 Brittany Luce

This week on Consider This, the DHS shutdown. What is ICE doing in airports and how are existing airport workers managing without pay?

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8.726 - 14.837 Unknown

You see an outpouring from the communities in many locations and you still have the 40% plus call outs.

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15.318 - 23.693 Brittany Luce

Why there are no easy solutions as workers wait for Congress to act. This week on Consider This, you can listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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25.883 - 33.771 Unknown

What is your milk allegiance? Are you 1%, 2%, oat milk, soy milk people? What's the vibe? What's going on?

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34.231 - 36.794 Andrea Freeman

Okay, well, I'm team soy milk.

37.094 - 37.495 Unknown

Love it.

37.855 - 41.359 Andrea Freeman

But I am flexible. I like coconut milk for ice cream.

42.48 - 50.608 Yasmin Tayag

I think of myself as milk agnostic, but because I have a two and a half year old at home, I only drink whole milk.

50.858 - 66.014 Unknown

Wow, okay, so I actually grew up drinking skim milk, which tastes like water. And then I realized I was lactose intolerant in college, so I started drinking soy milk then. I'll just drink it on its own. I just love it. I think it tastes great.

Chapter 2: What is the significance of the USDA's push for whole milk?

102.389 - 123.241 Unknown

posted what seems to be an AI video where when he drinks milk, it transports him to a nightclub. The caption is, when you take that first sip of whole milk. In another video he did with Kid Rock, like in real life, they're drinking whole milk in a hot tub together after working out.

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123.862 - 125.044 Yasmin Tayag

Just normal behavior.

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125.024 - 149.873 Unknown

Let that visual marinate, okay? Whole milk is also at the top of the new food pyramid. I really want to know, how do we make sense of this push for whole milk, especially when milk has some unsavory ideological associations? To get into it, I'm joined by Yasmin Tayag, staff writer for The Atlantic, who covers science and the future of food. Yasmin, thanks so much for being here.

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150.254 - 174.727 Unknown

Thanks for having me. And I also have Andrea Freeman, second century chair professor of law at Southwestern Law School and author of the book, Ruin Their Crops on the Ground, Politics of Food in the United States from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch. Andrea, welcome. Thank you. I'm very excited to be here with you too. Hello, hello.

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175.348 - 196.797 Unknown

I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Okay, so I just want to straight out ask, like, what is going on with this milk push? Like, what do you make of it? Yasmin, you first.

198.127 - 220.472 Yasmin Tayag

The whole milk push has a lot of nutritionists scratching their heads. Okay. Because whole milk, compared to its skim relatives, is packed with saturated fat. And we know that saturated fat is linked to the risk of heart disease. It raises cholesterol.

220.452 - 229.389 Unknown

Yeah, I feel like nutrition science is like never settled. And it's complicated, but diets high in saturated fats are linked with negative impacts on people's health.

229.409 - 261.698 Yasmin Tayag

But the recent dietary guidelines underwent a huge revamp. The biggest thing we've seen is that the traditional food pyramid has been turned upside down. And at the top are meats, dairy, in particular whole milk. So part of the justification for this inverted pyramid is the belief that saturated fats aren't actually that bad for you. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been pushing this for a long time.

262.049 - 284.795 Unknown

Well, you know, that makes me think about like the FDA commissioner, Marty McCary. He declared the quote unquote war on whole milk over. He said, quote, we're ending the 50 year war on natural saturated fat. Remarkably, schools by regulation are not supposed to have a certain amount of whole milk. That makes no sense scientifically.

Chapter 3: How does whole milk compare to other types of milk in terms of health?

760.715 - 766.282 Unknown

You said so many different words then. I want to make sure that the audience is processing them and I am as well.

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766.382 - 768.164 Yasmin Tayag

Shia LaBeouf just snuck in there.

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768.625 - 779.829 Unknown

He always does. Shia LaBeouf, the actor, made an anti-Trump art installation. In New York. In New York. And then how does milk relate to this?

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780.129 - 798.006 Andrea Freeman

Okay, so then a sort of neo-Nazi group went to protest the installation, and the form of their protest was to take off their shirts and get huge gallons of milk and chug them and let the milk run down their bare chests.

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798.347 - 799.628 Unknown

That sounds nasty.

800.168 - 807.185 Andrea Freeman

It's something. So this was their way of demonstrating... their political agenda.

807.206 - 822.184 Yasmin Tayag

And I'm just remembering that that incident involved one protester taking a swig of milk from his jug and then saying into a camera, an ice cold glass of pure racism.

822.333 - 823.194 Andrea Freeman

They weren't subtle.

823.554 - 846.282 Unknown

Yeah, I know around then a bunch of like far right figures like Richard Spencer put milk emojis in their Twitter bios. More recently, I've seen when some people are accused of being racist on X, like when they want to make it known in a cheeky way that they're being like knowingly racist. They'll sometimes post GIFs or images of a big milk jug or someone chugging milk. I've seen that pop up.

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