I know a fair number of people who won't touch dairy. I know even more people who regularly consume dairy but insist, even passionately, that it must be no-fat or low-fat. The low-fat hysteria of the 1980's was very successful in changing the way most of us eat, since most of us want to be trim and healthy, and low-fat eating was touted as the key toward those aims. I had to repeatedly prod my local grocer to please carry the full-fat version of a Greek yogurt when it was first introduced. When they initially stocked this new product, they only offered fat-free and 2%, so convinced were they that the full-fat version would be wasted inventory. They knew, from experience, what their customers were buying, and it was NOT full-fat dairy.
Well, healthy food consumers, keep your ear to the ground for developing news on dairy. It seems that low-fat may not benefit you in the way that you thought. We have always known that fat makes it easier for your body to assimilate the vitamins and proteins in milk, but the common sentiment was that the benefits of low-fat outshined the benefits of increased nutrient absorption. Now scientists are probing into whether the benefits of low-fat dairy are what we thought they were at all.
Stephan Guyanet is a neurobiologist who publishes an informative and accessible blog. He has just finished a most interesting study on the full-fat vs. low-fat dairy question. You can read it here: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2012/07/new-review-paper-by-yours-truly-high.html
Stay tuned to stay healthy....
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Karen, I was very fortunate to have been born to a mother who got into nutrition and health food way before it became fashionable. She made a study of it and then applied it along with common sense. When all the hoo-ha about full-fat dairy started, she kept doing what she was doing. When my father's doctor told him to switch from butter to margarine for his heart health, she kept doing what she was doing. Common sense told her that hydrogenated vegetable oil could not be more healthful than butter. She drank only unhomogenized milk, sensing that if there was anything harmful about full-fat milk it was a result of that process rather than the fat itself.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that, Jean. I, too, get skeptical when the latest "wisdom" of the food world is not sufficiently supported by research or experience...skim milk included.
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