Is Whole Fat Milk Better for You?

Link: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/02/12/275376259/the-full-fat-paradox-whole-milk-may-keep-us-lean

     The popular belief for a long time is that skim milk or low fat milk is substantially more beneficial for your health. This seemed to spring from the idea that the extra calories and saturated fat would raise the likelihood of heart disease and obesity. But scientists have recently come across two examples that would surprise most people.

     One of the examples is in one paper, published by Swedish researchers in the Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care, which had middle-aged men consume high-fat milk, butter and cream were surprised to discover that they had significantly less likeliness to become obese over a period of twelve years compared with men who never or rarely ate high-fat dairy.

     The second study was done by the European Journal of Nutrition which conducted sixteen observational studies. They found that the evidence procured was different than their original hypothesis, which was that whole fat dairies would raise the chances for heart disease and obesity. In fact, they concluded that ingesting high fat dairy would actually lower the chances for obesity.

     The reason why this is the case is still up for debate. Some say that because the dairy has more fat, it fills people up more and faster so they are less likely to eat additional food. Others say that there is a bioactive substance in whole fat dairy that alters our metabolism to use the fat provided by the dairy instead of storing it. And the last reason is that there are beneficial omega-3 fatty acids in the high fat milk that was not found in lower fat milks.

     This not only applies to middle aged men but to children as well. Archive of Diseases in Childhood  published that not only did the high fat dairy lower the weight gain, low fat dairy increased the weight gain as well. This was all very surprising for the scientific community.

   So while the reason for this phenomenon is unknown, it is very baffling either way and whether it is because it makes you eat less, has beneficial fatty acids, or alters your metabolism, it still leaves much to wonder on how this will impact peoples' diets.

Nature of Science Themes:

• Science is collaborative
• Science is based on evidence
• Science is subject to debate and tentative
• Importance of repeatability
• Role of curiosity and motivation