For years whole milk has been shunned by health-conscious adults in favour of semi-skimmed or plant milk – but old-school dairy products such as “full-fat” milk and Greek yoghurt are staging a comeback.
Retailers are reporting rising sales of whole milk, full-fat yoghurt and blocks of butter – with skimmed milk and low fat yoghurt left on the shelf – as customers go back to basics to avoid processed food.
Searches for the terms “full-fat milk” and “full-fat yoghurt” have soared on Waitrose’s website in the past month, up 417% and 233% respectively, while “block butter” is up 280%.
“We’re seeing a long-term trend of ‘low fat’ losing interest as a health focus,” said Kiti Soininen, category director for UK food and drink research at Mintel.
In 2018 32% of people put “low-fat” in the top three things they looked for in healthy food but by last year that had fallen, Soininen said. At the end of last year the top three factors were “low sugar content” (31%), “contributes to five-a-day” (24%) and “low fat” (24%).
The less hardline stance on fat being taken by consumers is down to a number of factors, not least the furore over ultra-processed food (UPF). At the same time more recent research studies suggest the link between saturated fat and heart disease is not as strong as once thought.
The nutritionist Alexa Mullane said: “It’s now understood that fats from whole foods, when consumed in moderation as part of a balanced diet, are not as harmful as previously believed, and actually have some health benefits.”
In Waitrose, full-fat dairy products are selling better than low-fat substitutes. The supermarket chain attributes this to concern about UPFs, with its customers turning away from low-fat, highly processed products in favour of less processed, whole-food ingredients.
“There’s been a lot of bad press around so-called healthy products which aren’t nutritious and don’t taste great,” said Maddy Wilson, Waitrose’s director of own brand. “The growing awareness of ultra-processed food in our diets has seen many customers seeking the basics and embracing a much simpler approach to their diet.”
The debate has not helped the alt-meat and alt-dairy cause, which, after enjoying a period of runaway growth, is in trouble, not least because shoppers are struggling to afford the products. They are usually more expensive than the animal equivalent; for example, in 2024 a litre of plant milk cost roughly twice as much as supermarket own-label cow’s milk.
Last year supermarket sales of whole milk grew slightly faster than those of plant-based milk, up 1.2% and 0.9% respectively, according to the data firm Kantar. Meanwhile, demand for semi-skimmed and skimmed milk fell 2.4% and 0.7% respectively.
Semi-skimmed is still the biggest seller by a wide margin, with 3bn litres sold in supermarkets last year – 10 times the amount of plant milk sold. For whole milk, the sales figure was 1.3bn litres.
This desire to eat less processed food is encouraging people to ditch ready meals, with 54% of home cooks telling Mintel that reading about UPFs had made them cook more. “These concerns about UPFs have added to the woes of the meat substitutes category, [which is] already under pressure from the income squeeze,” said Soininen.
When it came to plant milks and other alt-dairy, Mintel found “strong” perceptions that many products were “highly processed”. Two-thirds of adults said they would rather eat a dish of vegetables or pulses “on their own” than within a meat substitute.
After years of endless reinvention, in 2024 natural yoghurt was the “star performer” while diet yoghurts struggled to sell, said Soininen. Three in five people said concerns about highly processed foods had made them “look more closely” at the ingredients in yoghurts.
The increasingly mainstream discussion of menopause means women are also mindful of the risk of osteoporosis. “Calcium is vital for bone health, and dairy is a good source, so it’s good news that people are choosing butter over margarine, and dairy milk over plant milk,” said Mullane.
