Why Whole Milk is the Healthiest Choice

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.

Read more: All recipes, Basics, Drinks, Food, Health, good fats, homogenization, whole milk

By Laine Bergeson, Experience Life

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Robert O.

11:58AM PDT on Jun 19, 2011

Very interesting. I only drink 2% because it's typically cheaper and I'm on a tight budget (story of my life). This is good to know though. Thanks Laine and Megan!

send a green star

Val G.

11:05AM PDT on Jun 19, 2011

Thank you Megan!
But I really believe that milk is for veals...

Emily D.

6:11PM PDT on Jun 18, 2011

completly agree!!!!

Tami M.

9:58AM PDT on Jun 17, 2011

Thanks. i agree!

Betty C.

11:01PM PDT on Jun 8, 2011

Thanks for the info.

colleen p.

9:38AM PDT on May 23, 2011

raw is better?

Tim T.

10:08AM PDT on May 6, 2011

hi, I didn't have a chance to read all twelve billion comments, but I'm curious:

-What is OP's BMI
-What are OP's cholesterol (good/bad/total) levels?
-What are OP's scientific/peer reviewed information resources?

Eric S.

6:50AM PDT on Jul 15, 2010

Bob B. either you're a shill for the dairy industry or you've been reading material written by those in the dairy industry. Even some scientists are paid for or against a certain subject.

I would recommend that you become vegan for 30 days and see how you feel, but do it right. Do some research on what to eat and what not to eat. You could be a vegan and drink beer and eat Oreos, but that's not healthy.

The majority of people I know who have become vegan feel better than they were when they were meat eaters (which includes those who eat fish, BTW) and even vegetarians. Plus most have family members, including myself, who had diseases that could've gone awry if it weren't for their diet change. For example, my father would've lost his leg to cancer.

A plant-based diet is the healthiest and most peaceful lifestyle that one could live.

The human world will catch up eventually, but let it be soon, before it's too late, as the process to get animal-based foods (meat, fish, etc.) to your plate has damaged this earth more than anything else, including the "need" for oil.

Vegan Food for thought;)

Peace.

Bob B.

9:11PM PDT on Jul 14, 2010

I'm sorry if some above don't have a science degree-esp in biology or haven't taken a biochemistry class to understand the article above is true & that all your anti-whole milk talk is based on misinformation. If you research science articles like from the magazine Science or Biological Abstracts you will find overwhelming information about whole milk and that obesity is caused by bodily fat which is unrelated to dietary fat in any way. Your body metabolizes carbohydrates quickly so when you eat lots of pasta or bread your body gets overwhelmed and turns it into bodily fat. When you eat dietary fat associated with animal products your body takes a long time to metabolize it--meaning you have lots of time to use all of its energy. Protein and dietary fat will not give you bodily fat EVER. Too much plant products and especially processed food like putting corn syrup in foods is why obesity has occurred. Look back before processed foods and you will find little obesity. When you were little candy bars and chips did not have corn in them now they all do and additionally the next culprit is soy. Corn cannot be metabolized by humans without being soaked in lime. Corn syrup is a carbohydrate that are body only turns into fat because it does not recognize it as a real energy source--it's way too easy to break down. Soy causes thyroid problems in both sexes and mimics estrogen which is very bad for women and especially young girls--the effects of which have not been fully studied

Kristin F.

7:58AM PDT on Jun 3, 2010

I also wanted to add. I have friends who are lactose intolerant and you don't have to have milk, but they could eat cheese. Cheese and yogurts tend to be easier to digest for those who are lactose intolerant, but everybody is different.