Dairy, dairy, quite contrary

I’ve already written a bit about dietary fat and some of the evidence that it’s not the demon in our food supply that we’ve been told it is. It keeps coming up though. For example, let’s see how fat is portrayed in the 2010 USDA healthy eating guidelines. These guidelines emphasise the need to eat ‘nutrient dense’ foods, where:

...the nutrients and other beneficial substances in a food have not been “diluted” by the addition of calories from added solid fats, added sugars, or added refined starches, or by the solid fats naturally present in the food.

Yes, I added the emphasis. I thought it needed emphasising. And in case you are wondering, yes, they are suggesting that, for example, milk can only be considered ‘nutrient dense’ (and therefore good for you) if it has had the fat naturally present in it removed. On the one hand, this is not a surprise- it’s the usual ‘fat= bad’ message. But...it is surely a strange state of affairs where changing a food source from it’s natural state is considered a healthier alternative. 

At some point I want to look at how we got to this point where a ‘good’ food is one that is stripped of its natural contents. The history of this is really interesting- lots of twists and turns, bad science, good science with bad interpretations, intrigue, politics and murder. Well, ok not murder. But death from heart disease does feature. You’ll have to wait for that one, though. 

For now, let’s just focus on dairy. Why? Well, I can’t help but feel sorry for dairy. I think it got shafted in the whole low fat movement, to be honest. We were told to fear saturated fat and its partner-in-crime, cholesterol and dairy is full of both. The dairy farmers must have been spitting when the Heart Foundations and nutritional ‘experts’ started calling for people to leave the full fat milk where it belonged- in the cow. Here they were selling a product high in calcium, protein and vitamins and completely natural, and it suddenly wasn’t good enough. 

But then they rallied, perhaps realising that they would now be able to sell two products instead of one- low fat for the health conscious, and full fat for the rebels. 

While milk, cream and cheese got the low fat treatment, butter was thrown out the window altogether. Actually, it had been on the way out for years, with the support of the Heart Associations who pushed margarine with their mono and polyunsaturated fats made from natural plant seeds as a much healthier alternative. The Butter V Margarine fight is billed for another day- it deserves it’s own post. Let’s think about milk, cheese and yoghurt.

Does removing the fat from a glass of milk really make it more nutritious? 

Milk (the basis of all dairy, remember) contains vitamins A, D, E, and K, among other things. These vitamins (useful for seeing, preventing rickets and absorbing calcium, protecting cells from damage and helping your blood coagulate so you don’t bleed to death, respectively) are fat soluble. The less fat there is in the milk, the less you get of these little helpers. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater (something you should never do). Here’s a little chart to illustrate this point- based on the values on this fabulous site.

You can of course fortify your skim milk with vitamins after you take out the fat. This is actually mandatory in some countries in order to make skim milk as nutritious as it was when it had the fat in it. It’s a good marketing tool in other countries- Rev can plaster ‘with Vitamin D!!’ all over their cartons, thus making it look like they are doing us a favour. 

But even if we ignore the vitamins (the oh so essential, fat-soluble vitamins), there are other important reasons to consider letting full fat dairy back in our fridges. Here’s a recent study from Australia which looked at the association between total dairy intake and mortality. They found that 

• There was no association between dairy intake and death (you weren’t more likely to die if you ate more cheese), but

• People who ate the most full-fat dairy were the least likely to die from cardiovascular disease.

The authors seemed quite surprised by this finding, and didn't really explain their findings except to say that more research was needed- but it’s one among many studies showing an seemingly inexplicable relationship between whole dairy and good health outcomes. Inexplicable because we expect a food so full of fat and cholesterol to do us nothing but harm. But here’s an example of another recent study from Harvard where they found that eating full fat dairy meant higher levels of a special fatty acid, which in turn meant better blood work (lower levels of bad cholesterol, for a start), and a lower risk of type-II diabetes. The people who had more of this fatty acid circulating around were also slightly slimmer. Since this fatty acid is (you probably guessed) found in the fat part of dairy, drinking your milk skim means you get far less of it. 

Nutrient dense? And how! I’m sure we will be hearing more about the benefits of milk in the future as we start to explore this from a 'dairy might be good' rather than a 'dairy is surely bad' perspective. 

We'll probably hear a big fat “I told you so” from the Dairy Council, too.