The Dairy Blog

First, let me apologize for the long gap between posts.  I got into a battle with the web posting system, and I lost!  After a number of attempts to take care of it myself (I should be able to do this, shouldn’t I????!!) I swallowed my pride and asked for help.  So….here is the column I promised a few weeks ago.

Last time, I discussed the pitfalls of setting unrealistic weight loss goals versus the virtues of small changes.  After all, the grand gestures and promises that we make (you know the ones…”I’m going to quit eating fast food”; “I’m going to cut all of the [fill in the blank] from my diet”; “I’m going to the gym for at least an hour every day”; “I’m going to wake up 30 minutes early to make sure I can exercise”, etc) aren’t nearly as valuable as the small changes that you really can sustain to improve your health and lifestyle permanently. 

So, how does this small change approach work? To be successful, we need to acknowledge our current lifestyles and not make unrealistic promises to ourselves. For example, if you get lunch at a fast-food drive-through every day, it’s probably not realistic to try to quit eating fast food.  The good news is, it’s not even necessary!  My recommendations are to take three simple steps to a healthier weight:

• MOVE MORE: This isn’t a push to get you to sign up for a health club or buy the latest collection of home video workouts. If these are already part of your routine, that’s great. But if they’re not, don’t worry about it!  Instead, try to slightly change your routine to add more steps to your day.  When you go grocery shopping or to the mall, consider the best parking space the one that is furthest away rather than the once that is closest!  Consider taking the stairs instead of the elevator; when you do this, remember that it’s not all or nothing. For example, if you have to go from the 1^st floor to the 9^th floor of a building, perhaps walking all the way up is just too much…that’s OK!  Consider walking up one or two flights before taking the elevator, and perhaps you could take three or four flights on the way down.  Consider getting up from your desk to talk to your colleagues at work rather than always sending e-mails.  Go for a walk or play catch with your kids instead of watching TV after dinner.  Walk your dog instead of letting your dog in the back yard while you sit inside (of course your neighbors will appreciate it if you clean up after your dog!).  You get the idea…look for opportunities to be active instead of passive as part of your normal daily routine. It’ll become second nature and you won’t even notice the extra effort.

• EAT SMART: OK. This is where he’s going to get me.  The food cops are going to make me starting cooking all of my meals (and putting strange sounding things in them!) and bar the entrance to my favorite fast-food drive-through, right?  NOPE!  Not at all.  Healthy weight management is all about balancing what we do (Move More) with what we eat (Eat Smart). Our weight problems didn’t emerge from massive episodes of “pigging out”, and won’t be solved (for most of us) with massive dietary changes that are difficult to sustain. Our weight problems are the result of a chronic, but very small, imbalance between what we do and what we eat. To correct the problem, in addition to moving a bit more, we need only modestly adjust our diets.  This doesn’t mean going on a diet.  Instead, it means finding ways to “trim the edges” of our diets by eating just a little smarter.  From a practical perspective, this means finding ways to cut just 100 calories from your daily diet. You can do this without actually dieting.  Examples?  If you routinely eat fast food, we don’t suggest that you quit, or even that you reduce the frequency of drive-through visits. Instead, perhaps you could substitute a medium order of fries for a large one…that would save 100 calories.  Or perhaps you might order a single instead of a double cheeseburger…that would save even more!  If you drink a lot of soda, you probably already realize that is a major source of hidden calories.  But you don’t have to quit drinking soda.  Perhaps you could substitute a diet soda for one of your regular sodas.  Doesn’t work for you?  Maybe you could drink just one less regular soda each day.  That’s all it takes.

• INCLUDE DAIRY: People often try to cut dairy from their diets when they are trying to lose weight, but our research at the University of Tennessee shows that doing that just makes your weight control efforts harder.  As I wrote in an earlier posting, we now know that the calcium and other components of milk work together to make it harder for your body to store fat and easier to burn fat. The result? People who include at least three servings of dairy in their daily diets lose nearly twice as much weight and fat as those who don’t include dairy while cutting calories.  However, calories still count! You still have to follow the move more and eat smart messages to make this effective.

We have a program to put all of this together.  It’s called AMERICA ON THE MOVE IN TENNESSEE.  This is a program that's based in The Nutrition Institute at The University of Tennessee; it’s supported by a great website (www.americaonthemove.org/tn) which will help you track your activity and find lots of ways to cut 100 calories from meals, snacks and beverages.  Check it out…go to the site, register (this is a free service to help support healthy weight management) and take the first step towards permanent healthy weight management.

Sunday Olivia (she's another Mom) and I worked a 2 Day Breast Cancer Walk.  It was great.

Growing up Mayfield meant summers at the barn working with the “show cows,” preparing them for the county, regional and state fairs in the fall.  Most summer mornings would find me and others at the barn before 6:00 a.m.  We would feed the cows, clean the stalls, brush the cows and then lead them on a leash, as if we were in the show ring.  By September, we hoped the show calves and cows would know how to walk around the ring calmly on a leash.

Proper attire for youth showing cows was white – white pants and white dress shirts.  Girls could wear white pants or skirts but, whether a girl or a boy at ages 12-15, there is no way to wear white around cows and stay clean!  We showed our cows in McMinn County first, then Knoxville, Nashville and Memphis.  While I never personally attended the Ohio State Fair in Columbus, that show was considered the National Championship for Jersey cows.  I remember Scottie’s sister, Elaine, winning there, and how proud we all were to have a National Grand Champion Jersey from the Mayfield Farm.

I only showed junior and senior yearling calves.  Even though I had worked all summer teaching them to lead, it seems every time we entered the show ring my heifer would run!  I would hang on for dear life, flying through the sawdust in my clean white clothes.  The judge and others would help get my calf under control – many times leading her was forgotten and we just stood in the ring until the judging was over.  Then, it was back to the stall area, where we put blankets over our heifers.  I loved the blanket that had the following message on it, “My Mother Works for Mayfield’s.”

Rob

Hi! My name is Melinda and I have been a Mayfield Mom for over six years now and it is absolutely the best job you could ever have.  I call it my “feel good job”!

About five years ago myself and another Mom were sent to Alabama for an extremely important event.  Mayfield had worked very hard to get their products into Bruno’s Supermarkets. We were the ones chosen for this mission….we should have been afraid but we were pretty new to this job and a little too naive...

So here we go, two Mayfield Moms along with their two teenage daughters on a road trip. We traveled from East Tennessee to Birmingham, Alabama for a sampling at Bruno’s. I printed off our directions from mapquest and we were off. Of course, we didn’t realize there was an Alabama football game that day and that was our first obstacle. Really, driving in five lanes of traffic was our first obstacle. We had stopped for breakfast before we got into Birmingham and Mom # 2 had a belly ache and was in dire need of a toilet. She finally ended up going into a bar downtown with my daughter as a body guard. They laugh about the pink shag carpet on the steps and in the bathroom.

Back in the van and we are off to Bruno’s with about 45 minutes to spare. We were feeling the confindence - we can do this special event!! We find the store and we're even a little early. We run in the door toting all our sampling gear, ask the manager where he wants us to set up and he looks at us like we are crazy. (WE ARE!) "Just in the back near the freezers," he says. 

So, we are talking with an employee about the concert that is scheduled for this store while we sample.  The teenager's name was Aaron Carter, and he was very popular at the time. The employee says, "Oh, that is at the other Bruno’s across town." OH MY GOSH!  We are at the wrong store! I know we tore our table down in 30 seconds and literally ran out the front door. How stupid can we be?  At the wrong store for this “very special important event we know the two of you will be perfect for”!

We did get directions on the way out the door and we did arrive at the store only about 20 minutes late. No one was in the store anyway, everyone was outside watching the concert.  We prayed all the way home that we wouldn’t get fired, we knew our careers as “Mayfield Moms” was going to be short lived.  Actually, nothing was ever said about our little mix-up. 

Recently, my grandson, Dylan, was in Athens for a visit.  He went with me to the Chattanooga Airport to pick up my wife, Lisa, who had been visiting her sisters in Mobile, AL.  Dylan and I went to Chattanooga early enough to visit the Tennessee Aquarium.  I had not seen the new addition that houses the Butterfly Exhibit and the Saltwater Exhibit, with the sharks.  It was great!  I have been to the Atlanta Aquarium, which is also wonderful.  I really like the way the Chattanooga Aquarium flows.  Even if it is a little crowded, you don’t feel like it is.

So, plan a trip to either or both aquariums.  You and your kids or grandkids will enjoy them.  If you go to Chattanooga, make sure to save time for the Creative Discovery Museum.

You may click on each of the links below to visit these two great tourist attractions!

-Scottie

I think oatmeal is different today than it was fifty years ago. Today’s oatmeal is finer, not nearly as chewy as years ago. Back then, a small bowl of oatmeal would really fill you up. But I guess oatmeal was best used for cookies. My mother, Aunt Muriel, and Grandmother all made oatmeal cookies. Mother’s were round, flat and chewy. She usually put raisins in them, and sometimes chocolate chips. Aunt Muriel’s and Grandmother’s were more of a spoon drop cookie. I suppose they contained more flour, as they stayed chunky and did not flatten out. In the fall, Grandmother collected hundreds of black walnuts – she placed them in her driveway where she ran over them with her car to remove the hulls. Then, in late fall she would hand pick the black walnuts from the shells and cook tray after tray of oatmeal cookies with walnuts, then freeze them.

Scottie and I liked to fish. The best fishing hole was on the creek by the calf barn. We fished with a cane pole or a real fishing rod with worms and float.  Scottie and I would meet at daylight because that was when the fishing was the best. By nine o’clock or so the sun would be heating up, the fish would stop biting, and we would be so hungry! Grandmother’s house was the closest to the calf barn, so to Grandmother’s house we went - oatmeal cookies and Mayfield milk. That is the best breakfast we ever had.

It takes great ingredients to make great products, especially dairy products.  That's really where it all starts here at Mayfield and that's why we put such an emphasis on making sure that our ingredients are the best.  Raw milk is by far our largest raw ingredient, and every tanker load of milk must pass a number of tests at our scalehouse before we'll allow the truck to back into our receiving bay.  Every load is checked for temperature, bacteria, adulteration, antibiotics, and flavor (yes, we taste every load).  But it doesn't stop there.  We also receive condensed milk, milk powder, cocoa powder, several types of liquid sweeteners, bulk chocolate coatings, nuts, fruits, and many, many other ingredients that are used in our numerous ice cream flavors.  Each and every one is scrutinized by our receivers, lab techs, and operators.  Here's Armond checking the temperature on a load of milk that just arrived.

Alright, so I've probably left you all hanging long enough. To continue from my previous post...

After the Mayfield ice cream committee selects its top 10 candidates it’s time to take our selection process to the folks who ultimately determine the success of our new flavors – Mayfield ice cream lovers!

In August we get bulk quantities of our 10 finalists shipped to our three plants in Athens, Tennessee, Braselton, Georgia and Birmingham, Alabama. With the help of our VisitorsCenter employees and the Mayfield Mom Squad, we conduct open samplings for all employees and visitors, who, like the committee members, score the flavors 1-10.

The final testing comes in early fall when the Mayfield sales force  samples and scores the concepts at our fall sales meeting. This is the last group of people to impact Mayfield feature flavors for the following year.

By the time the winners are announced six months have passed and involved close to 600 taste testers. While this multi-layered process might seem cumbersome, it’s the best way we know to offer enticing, innovative flavors to consumers who want the creamiest ice cream to be found.

Enjoy!

Alan