Making the switch

I never thought I'd see the day...I switched to fat-free milk.

I grew up on whole milk, basically because that was the choice back then. Now, of course, the very thought makes me want to gag. I don't remember transitioning to 2%, so it must not have been too painful. I was faithful to 2% for a long, long time. I felt virtuous for not having the whole stuff, and the 2% tasted great.

Then I got married. Since I bought the groceries, I still bought 2%. I started to feel a twinge of guilt that maybe I wasn't doing the best thing for us, but after all, it wasn't like it was whole milk. Then one day my husband accidentally brought home 1%. I looked at it through narrowed eyes, wondering how to handle this invader of our home. What if I drank it and hated it? Worse, what if I drank it and liked it? Would I turn into one of those lowfat people, always looking at labels? Would I become obsessed with converting all my favorite recipes into zero-fat, tasteless cardboard? Maybe I could just wait until Joe finished off that gallon of 1%, and I could go back to the real stuff.

My curiosity and thirst prevailed, and I drank the 1%. I didn't hate it, and I didn't become obsessed with ridding our house of fat.

When we moved, the new grocery store carried 1/2%. Wow! I thought. This incremental fat thing is really something. What's next? .33%? A half of one percent?

A curious thing happened. Once I got used to the 1/2%, when Joe would accidentally buy the 1%, instead of thinking it was a yummy treat, I would think...I used to drink this? Willingly? Ugh.

I imagined living out the rest of my days contentedly drinking 1/2%. There halted my gradual descent in milk fat. I would never go lower. That blue stuff? I would never touch that. That isn't even really milk, it's...I don't know what it is, but it's not milk. Milk is white, and thick. Not runny. Not blue. Not so thin you can see the bottom of your cereal bowl through it.

But one day, lacking suitable reading material to keep me entertained while I ate my cereal, I happened to look at the label on the milk. Splots of milk landed on the table when I dropped my spoon into the bowl. What?? Even a teeny tiny, half percent of milk fat has saturated fat?? And not such a teeny tiny amount of it, either. I thought milk was supposed to be good for you!

Now I had a real dilemma. My conscience would no longer let me continue bringing that milk into our home now that I was enlightened as to the real nature of what I'd assumed was a healthy food. But could I do the blue stuff? And what would Joe say? In general he eats and drinks so fast that he doesn't really taste what he's consuming, but this was such a drastic move, I knew I had to consult him. I approached the subject with all the solemnity of bringing up a change in family status, and braced myself for a storm of protest.

"Honey, what would you think about switching to fat-free milk?"

He looked at me. "That's all I used to drink before we got married."

Another blow. Here I had thought he had always been in the fat camp with me, and now I realized I had dragged him down. No more excuses now.

The next time I went to the store for milk, I paused in front of the dairy case, feeling the significance of the occasion. I looked apologetically at the 1/2% and reached for the skim. I had expected it to somehow feel foreign, but it fit well in my hand. The other groceries welcomed it into the cart, as if they had been waiting for it for a very long time. But some were a little nervous. The cheese, the sour cream, the cottage cheese -- all sensed that they might be the next to be, well, down-fatted.