28 May 2014 In defense of whole milk
Fat-phobia has become a dietary axiom. For 50 years scientists have been presenting evidence linking fats, especially saturated fats like those found in animal products, with cardiovascular disease. Yet new studies show that drinking low-fat milk is like throwing out the baby with the bathwater – and can even lead to obesity.
Pediatricians’ advice to parents to switch to low-fat or skim milk has become the norm. Some school districts in Connecticut are even considering banning whole milk for small children.
But new research strongly counters this view. For instance, a 2013 long-term University of Virginia study published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood shows that skim milk actually makes children heavier than whole milk.
Drs Mark DeBoer and Rebecca Schafer evaluated data from 10 700 children between two and four and concluded that “children given skim or one-percent milk were more likely to become overweight and obese”.
This “striking” link between low-fat milk and obesity was “present in every single racial ethnic group and every single social strata”, DeBoer says on UVA’s website.
UVA’s findings echoed a 2005 Harvard study that found that one-percent milk led to greater weight gain in 9- to 14-year-olds than whole milk. A 2010 Journal of the American Dietetic Association study found that higher intake of whole milk at age 2 “was associated with a slightly lower BMI”.
That’s because whole milk may be “a better satiety agent” (makes you feel full), thus “holding down other calorie consumption”, DeBoer says.
A Washington State University professor goes further. In the journal PLOS One, Professor Charles M. Benbrook concludes that organic/pasture-raised whole milk has more heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids than milk from cows that are raised conventionally.
A cow’s four-chambered stomach system produces milk (and beef) with higher omega-3 levels when it digests grass. But over the last 50 years we’ve shifted cows, chickens and farm-raised fish to a corn diet, Benbrook says. And that, he says, has “altered their fatty profiles.”
The closer to zero-fat milk you go, “the more you eliminate fatty acid benefits,” he says. You also eliminate naturally occurring Vitamins A and D, which are then added synthetically. And you add powdered milk, which contains artery-hardening oxidized cholesterol, for “mouth feel.”….