Name: Whole vs. Skim: Which Milk Is Better For You?
Uploaded: 2020-11-18T21:01:30.000Z
Duration: 3 min 36 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Ads tell us milk does a body good. But are we talking whole milk or 2%? It’s not what you think.

If you were a child of the eighties or nineties your parents likely poured you some low fat milk, it was all the rave.

In fact in 1985, the United States Department of Agriculture officially recommended a switch to skim milk, three glasses of it a day.

But, more recently, we’ve begun collecting evidence that says the USDA might be missing an important piece of the story.

In a recent study published in the journal Circulation, researchers looked at data that spanned about 15 years.

They were specifically interested in how dairy fat biomarkers in the blood are related to diabetes.

Higher concentrations of dairy fat biomarkers were associated with lowered risk of diabetes.

And whole milk has been tied to more than just a decrease in diabetes.

Another study published in the Journal of American Nutrition looked at its relation to obesity in more than 18,000 women over the course of about 11 years.

They found that high dairy fat intake was associated with less weight gain and lowered risk of obesity.

In fact, a meta-review of 25 different studies published in the European Journal of Nutrition, supports these findings.

Researchers found that there are no benefits linked to low fat dairy compared to whole fat.

When it comes to type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, people who consume either products come out about the same.

What’s more, their data indeed indicated that full-fat dairy is associated with lower obesity rates.

Eighteen of the 25 studies showed that participants were either at lower risk for obesity, experienced less weight gain, or weighed less overall than those who consumed low fat dairy.

The results for the other seven were inconclusive; but altogether these studies suggest that at the very least, full fat milk is on par with skim milk.

But this isn’t really a story about milk.

We’re not suggesting you go chug down a glass.

In fact, if you’re like two thirds of the population, the lactose in it will cause some nasty side-effects.

And it’s not really a story about fat, either.

Rather, it’s more about what we do when we cut the fat.

See, what some scientists think ends up happening when we drink low fat milk, is that our bodies try to make up for the lost calories.

Simply put we stay hungrier than if we were to drink whole milk.

And rather than reaching for, say a zucchini or cooking up a chicken breast, we tend to load up on carbs.

Our body then turns excess carbohydrates into sugar, which then gets stored in our bodies as fat, yes, those fluffy love handles.

It’s sort of ironic that cutting fat in our diets leads to more fat on our bodies, but this is exactly what’s happening.

In short, all these associations between milk fat and its benefits may be due to our behavior, not what milk fat does to our bodies specifically.

So before you go inhale a glass of whole milk hoping to be healthier, you might instead want to pay attention to the variety of foods you’re eating and drinking.

And if you're not into cals in milk at all, because who's a fan of gas or bloating anyway?

You might want to go for some soy, coconut, or almond milk instead.

But which one of these is better? Julia has a scoop here.

It has just as much protein as regular milk, more fiber, and soy has been shown to lower bad cholesterol and raise the good kind, according to a study published in The American Journal of Cardiology.

Other studies like one published in Circulation showed that soy products can reduce blood pressure.

What do you pour into your cereal? Personally, I love almond milk.

Share your thoughts in the comments, and remember to subscribe, so you'll never miss an episode of Dnews.