
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, April 18, 1995                   TAG: 9504180122
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

LOWFAT MILK ISN'T, WEALTHY CRUSADER'S ADS TELL NATION

Milk ``does a body good,'' but a rich anti-cholesterol crusader launched a national campaign Monday to tell Americans they can cut the fat by guzzling skim milk instead of the 2 percent kind.

Phil Sokolof, 72, an Omaha, Neb., businessman, is spending more than $500,000 of his own money on ads saying 2 percent milk doesn't meet the government definition of a lowfat food, though the law allows it to be sold as such.

The full-page advertisements featuring an overweight model with a milk mustache - a parody of a current milk industry campaign - are appearing in more than 40 newspapers, including USA Today and The New York Times.

Gregory Miller, a nutritionist for the National Dairy Council, said 2 percent milk fits easily into any balanced diet and that people who like its taste shouldn't be made to feel guilty for not drinking skim milk, which is fat-free.

Milk advertisements by a dairy farmers' association have proclaimed that milk ``does a body good.'' A current campaign features female models and celebrities with milk mustaches along with the slogan ``Milk, what a surprise.''

Sokolof's ads claim that three 8-ounce servings of 2 percent milk have the same amount of fat as nine strips of cooked bacon.

Sokolof said he wanted people to know that skim milk is as nutritionally sound as 2 percent milk, which has 5 grams of fat per serving.

The Food and Drug Administration says products advertised as lowfat must have 3 grams of fat or less per serving, but Congress' nutritional labeling law exempted 2 percent milk from that standard.

by CNB