Drink the Real Stuff

I don't drink milk, but my kids sure do, and despite our pediatrician's protestations, we let them drink whole milk (delivered, by the way, straight from the farm to our doorstep). Now we have less reason to fear that we're putting our children's lives at risk because it might just turn out that whole milk helps keep us leaner.

In one paper, published by Swedish researchers in the Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care, middle-aged men who consumed high-fat milk, butter and cream were significantly less likely to become obese over a period of 12 years compared to men who never or rarely ate high-fat dairy. 

 Yep, that's right. The butter and whole-milk eaters did better at keeping the pounds off.
"I would say it's counter-intuitive," says Greg Miller, executive vice president of the National Dairy Council.

The second study, published in the European Journal of Nutrition, is a meta-analysis of 16 observational studies. There has been a hypothesis that high-fat dairy foods contribute to obesity and heart disease risk, but the reviewers concluded that the evidence does not support this hypothesis. In fact, the reviewers found that in most of the studies, high-fat dairy was associated with a lower risk of obesity. "We continue to see more and more data coming out [finding that] consumption of whole-milk dairy products is associated with reduced body fat," Miller says.

Time ran with a similar study, noting that the leaner milk perhaps leaves drinkers less satiated.

There's more and more evidence that "low fat" stuff is just pointless, if not outright bad for your dieting purposes. It's increasingly frustrating trying to find yogurt that isn't fat free. Give me fat - it's actually a necessary part of our diet and proper amounts of the stuff are going to fill us up a lot more than the sugar that goes into replacing the lost fat content.