High Cal???

I like milk.  Yes, I am lactose intolerant, but I like milk in my tea.  So, I buy milk in small quantities because it would otherwise go bad.  So when I moved to Malaysia, I was hoping to have nice fresh, high-quality milk – as I’m in a developing country that I would expect to have way less preservatives, additives, and hormones than the milk in the US.  However, I was horrified to find that most, if not all, milk in Malaysia is made from “milk solids’ a.k.a. powdered milk!!  I mean seriously?!?!  Ewwwwwww…

So the first thing I did was avoid it – trying to drink lemon tea or green tea.  However, my body was not fooled.  It missed and craved milk tea.  So I caved, and started trying the different brands.  This led me to my second ‘issue’ with dairy products here – there is absolutely no variety.  Yes, you see a lot of different brands on the shelf, but if you look at the back, they are all made by the same few companies, and moreover, they are all made with milk solids instead of fresh milk.  Skim milk is pretty much non-existent, so when I go shopping I have to scour the shelf for anything with a resemblance of ‘low fat’ or ‘low calorie’.   This past weekend, when I went to the store, the only option I was left with (in the size I wanted) was this milk that says, and I quote “low fat high cal milk”!!!!  HIGH CAL… why would anyone purposely buy high calorie milk? Especially when they are looking for low fat?  It just doesn’t make sense.  And moreover, why would that be a selling point? It just doesn’t make sense.  I looked at the nutritional value on the back and didn’t see that it was high calorie, when compared to others – so I was pretty much puzzled.

Leave it to my narrow-minded American brain to get this wrong, because when I got to work on Monday and asked about it pretty much everyone in the office started laughing at me.  ‘High cal’ does not mean high calorie (which in my opinion would make the most sense).  No, ‘high cal’ means high calcium!!!!!  I honestly didn’t see that coming for 100 miles.  Maybe the company should do more market research before branding their milk.  Hahahah!!  Oh well, you learn something new every day.