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Whole milk has been maligned as unhealthy for decades despite being filled with nutrients. Now, at Mercola.com, Dr. Joseph Mercola discusses a major shift in the perception of whole milk and its potential for protecting your heart. He writes:
For decades, Americans have been told to avoid whole milk due to its saturated fat content, which has been falsely accused of clogging arteries and causing heart disease. To this day, the U.S. dietary guidelines and health authorities like the American Heart Association and the World Health Organization recommend drinking low-fat or skim milk for this reason.
However, as Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at Tufts University, recently told New York Times reporter Alice Callahan,1 this guidance goes back to the first edition of the dietary guidelines, issued in 1980, and most studies performed since then have exonerated full-fat whole milk.
In fact, most studies have found that dairy products are associated with lower risks of high blood pressure, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, regardless of fat content. What’s more, even though full-fat dairy products have higher calorie content, they don’t appear to contribute to weight gain, either.
Dairy Protects Heart Health
For example, a 2018 Lancet study,2 which followed 136,384 adults across five continents for nine years, found that, compared to those who did not consume dairy (milk, yogurt and cheese), those who consumed two or more servings per day were:
- 17% less likely to die from any cause
- 22% less likely to die from cardiovascular disease
- 34% less likely to die from a stroke
Milk and yogurt, in particular, were associated with a lower risk of mortality and/or major cardiovascular events, and there was no discernible difference between low-fat and high-fat products. Cheese and butter intake were not significantly associated with these outcomes. Serving sizes were as follows:
- Milk and yogurt — 1 cup or 244 grams
- Cheese — one slice or 15 grams
- Butter — 1 teaspoon or 5 grams
There’s More to Milk Than Milk Fat
As noted in the Lancet paper:3
“… dietary guidelines recommend minimizing consumption of whole-fat dairy products for cardiovascular disease prevention …
However, dairy products and dairy fat also contain potentially beneficial compounds — including specific amino acids, medium-chain and odd-chain saturated fats, milk fat globule phospholipids, unsaturated and branched-chain fats … vitamin K1 and K2, and calcium — and can contain probiotics, many of which also affect health outcomes.
Therefore, the net effect of dairy intake on health outcomes might not be reliably informed solely from its effect on a single risk marker (i.e., LDL cholesterol) or fatty acids.”
The authors also review the results from previous meta-analyses,4 none of which were able to discern a significant problem with dairy. For example, one meta-analysis of cohort studies found higher milk intake lowered the risk of high blood pressure while having “a neutral effect on cardiovascular disease.”
The DASH trial also found a link between milk consumption and reduced blood pressure. Other meta-analyses have punctured the LDL argument as well. One such analysis, which included 20 randomized trials, found a “non-significant” increase in LDL cholesterol among those who consumed either low-fat or high-fat dairy products. Ditto for cheese.
One potential reason for this is because milk fat is packaged in globule phospholipids, which help bind cholesterol in your digestive tract.5,6
Another large-scale trial,7 also published in 2018, which pooled results from 16 cohorts from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Taiwan, involving 63,682 individuals with a follow-up of nine years, found those with the highest levels of milk fats (odd-chain fatty acids 15:0 and 17:0, and trans-palmitoleic acid specifically) had a 29% lower incidence of Type 2 diabetes.
Read more here.
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