Considering that, in the UK at least, full fat milk is around 4% fat, it is hardly something you need a 'strategy' to compensate for.

Consumers need to be aware of the nutritional value of a food, which is a whole lot more than just the fat content. Even things like cheese and butter, which have considerably (ahem) higher fat value than milk, have nutritional value, whereas a lot of processed food might be low in fat but high in sugar, salt and calories and have absolutely naff all in terms of vitamin or mineral content.

If you're overweight and want to lose the excess, then obviously you have to be concerned about fat and calorie intake - in which case you'd be far better off drinking green tea, glasses of water and eating loads of green veg - not to mention all the exercise you'd be doing - rather than trying to maintain your current diet but in some kind of magical 'low-fat, low-cal' form.

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First they tell me that the low-fat dressing I have been putting on my salad for YEARS will keep me from absorbing the good stuff from my veggies and NOW perhaps I have been sabotaging my weightloss by drinking SKIM MILK???? I am SO confused! I think I am going to stick with A calorie is a calorie is a calorie. Especially since I am trying to get the 24oz of dairy a day that they recommend. That is a lot of added calories a day. Besides after drinking skim milk for 15 yrs I think whole milk tastes disgusting.

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Sindy, you might be interested in this excerpt from a presentation by Sally Fallon, a leading non-profit nutritionist with no ties to industry, to the Consumer Health of Canada conference in 2002, and based on multiple research studies.

"...whole milk will most closely approximate original cow's milk. The butterfat left over will go into butter, cream, cheese, toppings and ice cream. The dairy industry loves to sell low fat milk and skim milk because they can make a lot more money from the butterfat when consumers buy it as ice cream. When they remove the fat to make reduced fat milks, they replace the fat with powdered milk concentrate, which is formed by high temperature spray drying. All reduced-fat milks have dried skim milk added to give them body, although this ingredient is not usually on the labels. The result is a very high-protein, lowfat product. Because the body uses up many nutrients to assimilate protein—especially the nutrients contained in animal fat—such doctored milk can quickly lead to nutrient deficiencies.

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Talia, Thanks for the info. That does sound kind of yucky! But like I said after years of drinking skim that is the taste I prefer now. But no worries I make up for it by eating those things like ice cream and cheese that they steal that extra fat for.(so, likely there is not much chance I am nutrient deficient). Drinking the skim milk gives me a little wiggle room for that stuff occasionally. Can you give me more info so that I can read more of that article you are referencing?

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Sindy, go to www.westonaprice.org and search skim milk, milk, raw milk, and pastuerized milk for this topic. The piece I quoted is from "Dirst Secrets of the Food Processing Industry.: You sound like a health-conscious person and interested in nutrients (far more important in the long run than calories, cholesterol, etc.), so cruise around this site some more as you have time. It's got some pretty amazing information. I always enjoy the "caustic commentary" pieces that skewer big agribusiness and food processors when appropriate, and well-researched and documented. One of the most interesting (which also appears in the skim milk article) is the experiment where lab mice who were fed commonly consumed extruded cereal died before the mice who were fed only the cereal box. Enjoy! and best of health to you.

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P.S. Sindy and all: Here's another pull from the article I cited before you might be interested in. I hadn't scrolled down far enough to catch it.

A note on the production of skim milk powder: liquid milk is forced through a tiny hole at high pressure, and then blown out into the air. This causes a lot of nitrates to form and the cholesterol in the milk is oxidized. Those of you who are familiar with my work know that cholesterol is your best friend; you don't have to worry about natural cholesterol in your food; however, you do not want to eat oxidized cholesterol. Oxidized cholesterol contributes to the buildup of plaque in the arteries, to atherosclerosis. So when you drink reduced-fat milk thinking that it will help you avoid heart disease, you are actually consuming oxidized cholesterol, which initiates the process of heart disease

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I'm really starting to believe that the more we modify our food the more unhealthy it becomes.

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Smari, I agree. I have read way too many articles on stuff like high fructose corn syrup and MSG. My boyfriend and I have been eating mostly organic for about a year now, and man we can tell the difference! Anything that isn't organic has the igredients list carefully scanned. In general, we eat very little that is processed or altered these days. The deeper I get into my field of study, the more I believe that a lot of health issues today are linked with modified foods.

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"You kids hush up and drink your milk!" - A direct quote from my mother. Believe me, she never needed to say it twice.

Now, fifty years later, have had a heart attack and I'm having a devil of a time finding foods I can eat that don't taste like excrement. Really.

I can, thank God, still have some dairy in my diet. I guess getting old as a diabetic you have to expect things like this to happen.

I can't have whole milk or real cheese any more. However there are small compensations for that. I can have soy-based cheeses if their fat content is not too high. I like them, expecially the cheddar flavor. The Swiss is good too.

My advice to you all is simply to watch your total fat content and avoid saturated fats and avoid trans-fats like the plague. It's never too late to save your heart from congestive heart failure.

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I find it hard to believe there's a causal relationship between full-fat milk drinking and lower weight. And, according to the linked news article, the lead researcher seems to be quite inconclusive about the findings. Ah, the slow, dreary march of scientific progress!

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