January 2009 Archives

I drink whole milk and eat full-fat yogurt, cream cheese, and sour cream. Sure, full-fat dairy products taste better than the skim/fat-free versions, but I don't eat them for the taste. I eat full-fat dairy because it's better for my health and my weight.

Yep, you heard me right: I eat dairy products with all the fat god gave 'em, and I do it because it's good for me.

Here's why:

1.    Our bodies cannot digest the protein or absorb the calcium from milk without the fat.

2.    Vitamins A and D are also fat-soluble. So you can't absorb them from milk when all the fat has been skimmed off. (This makes fortified skim milk the biggest sham of all -- you can pump fat-free milk full of a year's supply of vitamins A and D, but the body can't access them).

3.    Milk fat contains glycosphingolipids, types of fats linked to immune system health and cell metabolism.

4.    Contrary to popular belief, low-fat and fat-free diets do not help prevent heart disease (see my last blog post), and science has now revealed that the link between saturated fat (long villainized as a cause of heart disease) and heart disease is tenuous at best.
 
5.    In fact, studies now show that eating saturated fat raises good cholesterol -- the kind of cholesterol you want and need in your body.

6.    The world's healthiest foods are whole foods -- foods that have not been processed. Why? The nutrients in whole foods have a natural synergy with one another -- that is, they work best in and are most beneficial to the body when they are taken together (not when they are isolated in, say, beta-carotene supplements of Vitamin C capsules). So when you pull some or all of the fat out of milk, you throw its nutritional profile out of whack. Basically, you discard all of the health benefits when you discard the fat.

7.    And last but definitely not least: healthy dietary fat will NOT make you fat. We've been taught for years that dietary fat is the root of all evil (again, see my last post). But we need healthy fat in our diet for proper body composition and long-term weight maintenance. The key factor here is knowing the difference between good fats and bad fats (for more on good and bad fats and the role healthy fat plays in weight maintenance, see Weight Loss Rules to Rethink).

A final note: When it comes to whole milk, you should also drink nonhomogenized when you can. Homogenization is "the technique of crushing milkfat globules into droplets too small to rise to the surface in a cream layer," writes Anne Mendelson in Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages (Knopf, 2008). Homogenization offered two big advantages to the dairy industry: (1) the abolition of the "creamline," as it's called, made it possible to package milk in more convenient [read: disposable] cardboard packaging instead of traditional glass bottles and (2) homogenizing made it possible for a commercial dairy to "calculate the amount of fat in incoming milk, completely remove it, and homogenize it back into milk in any desired proportion...In effect, 'whole milk' could now be whatever the industry said it was."

To put it more bluntly: homogenized whole milk isn't whole. The dairy-processing industry decided that whole milk should be milk with 3.25% fat (raw milk straight from the cow averages between 4 - 5.5% fat). That way, no matter what cow produced the milk, after homogenization all the milk would taste the same.

When you buy homogenized milk, you're buying a whole food that isn't whole -- it's had it's fat removed, evened out, and injected back into it in an amount less than what appears in nature. So choose whole milk, skip homogenization, and enjoy!

Over the last 30 years, one of the main tenets of nutrition science has been that dietary fat is bad for you.

The theory that dietary fat causes chronic diseases -- dubbed the lipid hypothesis -- has been preached for decades. And the message has really sunk in. Witness today's supermarket shelves piled with "low-fat" this, "fat-free" that, and "cholesterol-free" everything.

The trouble, as most experts now realize, is that the lipid hypothesis is wrong -- and that the advice to avoid dietary fat and opt for low- or no-fat options has not made us healthy and thin. In fact, science now points to the fact that the low-fat diet has made us sadder, fatter, and less healthy.

Here's an excerpt from a 2001 study by nutrition scientists at Harvard School of Public Health (quoted by Michael Pollan in In Defense of Food) that puts the situation in frank, uncompromising terms:

During the past several decades, reduction in fat intake has been the main focus of national dietary recommendations. In the public's mind, the words "dietary fat" have become synonymous with obesity and heart disease, whereas the words "low-fat" and "fat-free" have been synonymous with heart health.

It is now increasingly recognized that the low-fat campaign has been based on little scientific evidence and may have caused unintended health consequences.

 -- from "Types of Dietary Fat and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease: A Critical Review;" Frank B. Hu, Journal of the American College of Nutrition, Vol. 20 (2001)

The evidence against the lipid hypothesis is manifold and conclusive, though there isn't room here to riffle through all the science. But there IS room to write a handy list of some of the facts now known about dietary fats and another list of great resources if you want to learn more about the right kinds of dietary fat. I'm hoping there's enough info here and in the books and links below, that you ditch low- and no-fat foods for good!

Why Low-Fat and Fat-Free Foods Make You Sadder, Fatter, and Less Healthy

 1.    The amount of saturated fat in your diet has little to no bearing your risk of coronary heart disease.
 
2.    There is no direct evidence linking egg consumption (eggs are high in cholesterol) and increased risk of coronary heart disease. In fact, the link between cholesterol intake in the diet and cholesterol in the blood has always been tenuous at best.

3.    Eating more of certain types of fatty acids -- specifically, omega-3 fatty acids -- reduces "coronary and total mortality" in heart patients. That's right: eating more of certain fats decreases risk of heart disease.

4.    Although a major purported benefit of the "fat-free" diet is weight loss, a review of research from the last 30 years failed to turn up any evidence of a connection between low-fat and fat-free foods and weight loss. In fact, the review turned up evidence that replacing fats in the diet with carbohydrates leads to weight gain.

5.    The human brain is about 60 percent fat (every neuron is covered in a protective layer of fat). If we don't get enough of the right kinds of fats, we're not just short-changing our bodies, we're short-changing our brains.
 
6.    Michael Pollan writes in In Defense of Food: "Fats make up the structure of our cell walls, the ratios between the various kinds influencing the permeability of the cells to everything from glucose and hormones to microbes and toxins. Without adequate amounts of fat in the diet, fat soluble vitamins like A and E  can't pass through the intestinal walls."

7.    Refined carbohydrates (which are the primary replacement for fat in low- and no-fat diets), writes Pollan, "interfere with insulin metabolism in ways that increase hunger and promote overeating and fat storage in the body."

(This list culled from "Types of Dietary Fat and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease: A Critical Review;" Frank B. Hu, Journal of the American College of Nutrition, Vol. 20 (2001) and In Defense of Food (Penguin, 2008) by Michael Pollan.)

Experience Life stories on healthy fats:

"Big Fat Controversy" -- Expert fats researcher Dr. Mary Enig offers surprising insider views on good fats, bad fats and the "food police."

"Build a Better Brain" -- Fitness is more than just losing weight and toning up - it's a whole-body pursuit, one that includes tending to the health of one of your most important organs: the brain.

"All About Oils" -- Some fats and oils are good for us - and critically important to our health. Others are just plain bad. And with some fats, it depends. Here's how to make sense of this slippery subject and make the very best choices about what you put into your body.

Good books on dietary fat and the lipid hypothesis:

Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health by Gary Taubes (Anchor, 2008)

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan (Penguin, 2008)

Know Your Fats by Mary Enig, PhD (Bethesda Press, 2000)

Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck (Bloomsbury, 2006)

Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy by Walter Willett, MD, with Patrick J. Skerrett (Free Press, 2005)

UltraMetabolism: The Simple Plan for Automatic Weight Loss by Mark Hyman, MD (Scribner, 2006)

What to Eat by Marion Nestle (North Point, 2007)