http://www.care2.com/greenliving/why-whole-milk-is-the-healthiest-choice.html
Why Whole Milk is the Healthiest Choice
By Laine Bergeson, Experience Life
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!
Experience Life magazine is an award-winning health and fitness publication that aims to empower people to live their best, most authentic lives, and challenges the conventions of hype, gimmicks and superficiality in favor of a discerning, whole-person perspective. Visit www.experiencelifemag.com to learn more and to sign up for the Experience Life newsletter.
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190 comments
add your comment »I have always suspected that natural fats are an important part of a nutritional diet. THANK YOU for beginning this conversation! I am tired of resentful looks when I dare to eat this food in front of others. And I am a size 2!
vitamine a
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Yea for whole milk. It is the only kind I will drink!
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Cheryl, I did write "try the Mercola site, or Primal Diet for some non vested interest advice". Key word 'some'. If you work for nothing then good on you, but most of us need to make a little to stop going backwards financially.
It's obvious from your comments, you haven't studied the Primal Diet well enough to have a good understanding of it.(contempt before complete investigation, enslaves the mind, or soul to ignorance) The human race is becoming weaker and sicker, yet we have this medical system based on the Pasteur Theory that is supposed to make us well. Pity they didn't take more notice of his peers, Lemark and Bechamp. We would be far better of now, and a more independent in our health. But I guess they saw the control and profit in Pasteur's false theory back then. It sure shows in the profit margins of the Pharmaceutical giants, and the lack of good health in the popukace.(cure a patient, lose a customer)
The Primal Diet man is just sharing his knowledge brought about by being 40years free of bone cancer,diabetes,chronic fatigue,autism etc., and free of the damage done to him by the medical, during his treatments that were supposed to help him.
Re. Soy .It can be ok in fermented form which gives the body a chance to assimilate any nutrients that may be useful.
Re. Milk. please state the type of dairy products you are referring to. i agree that commercial milk is useless and dangerous. Raw dairy is fine. Early farmers were very healthy.
It good to chat! Chee
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From MilkSucks.com:
Dairy products are a health hazard. They contain no fiber or complex carbohydrates and are laden with saturated fat and cholesterol. They are contaminated with cow's blood and pus and are frequently contaminated with pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics. Dairy products are linked to allergies, constipation, obesity, heart disease, cancer, and other diseases.
The late Dr. Benjamin Spock, America's leading authority on child care, spoke out against feeding cow's milk to children, saying it can cause anemia, allergies, and insulin-dependent diabetes and in the long term, will set kids up for obesity and heart disease, America's number one cause of death.
And dairy products may actually cause osteoporosis, not prevent it, since their high-protein content leaches calcium from the body. Population studies, backed up by a groundbreaking Harvard study of more than 75,000 nurses, suggest that drinking milk can actually cause osteoporosis.
Modern milk and meat production are not only a health and humane issue, but an environmental one as well. See MilkSucks.com for more info.
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The Primal Diet has no vested interest? The guy is living off book royalties! Eating nothing but not only raw, but ROTTEN meat is just disgusting. Even my dog wouldn't eat anything that gross. Apparently some people would do anything if they were promised they'd be able to fit into a bikini. And where in America would you find enough "organic and free range, ideally grass-fed" meat to sustain such a diet? Better add "kosher slaughtered" while we're at it, to minimize the risk of feces contaminating the meat, which happens regularly in meat plants here. Most cows are literally covered and caked in it when they arrive at the slaughterhouse (remember they live in small pens, inches deep in their own excrement, and that's where they have to sleep), and do you think they all get a nice bath before they're skinned?
As far as soy milk wreaking hormonal havoc, do we see any evidence of this in cultures that regularly consume lots of soy products? The phytoestrogens in soy milk can actually act as anti-estrogens and help protect against breast cancer in women.
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Claudia, Claudia, Claudia. You probably haven't read up on the perils of soy. Get to it girl, before your hormones(among other things) start going awry.
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Good on you Sabrina. The big corporations will love you for it. Sadly the body will miss out on all that much needed fat it uses to keep the ever present toxins stored in a safe place. Don't worry though, the body can take some of the fat from your nervous system and brain area. By that time you won't notice it, as you will be probably be drugged up on anti depressants, or be too dumb to work it out. The corporations will like that as well!
But, if there is still a spark of sense left in you, try the Mercola site, or Primal Diet for some non vested interest advice.
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I still don't believe it. I'm sticking with skim milk and low fat yogurt.
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I find unsweetened soy milk the best light but filling drink
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There is no denying the richness of milk. It is a single source of nutrition created by a mother for it's baby. After a short while we are fully capable, as are all mammals, to be able to live without milk after a year or so. To have to live off a mother's milk all your life might be too much hard work for a mother. Rest assured we are totally capable of living without milk, from a human, or other species.
So, the history of milk has created a demand and culture for us to include milk in our daily lives which makes it harder to adapt to a life without it. So we have the alternative plant based products so we don't miss cakes, cookies, custard, cereal and cheese. With full attention given to health look towards sprouted seeds which are nutrient and protein rich food. Also look towards more raw food which carry live enzymes. For your brain, look towards omega oils which are essential for brain development. I hope I've helped with these suggestions but there is a wealth of information available to understand our dietary needs and sources.
It's good to honestly consider the lives of animals from whom we take milk, and their flesh. This is a video from peta on the treatment of cows in a factory orientated farm.
https://secure.peta.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=2521&s_src=plolec09
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