What kind of dairy does a body good? Science is updating the answer : Shots

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When new food directives are revealed later this month, the Trump administration is expected to upset longtime advice on whole milk and its full-fledged friends in the dairy driveway.

For decades, the American public has been advisable to opt for oily or low -fat dairy options, largely without concern to limit the consumption of saturated fats in these foods.

While the public does not necessarily follow this advice – cheese is the main source of saturated fat in our diet – the health secretary Robert F. Kennedy promised to end “the attack on whole milk, cheese and yogurt” and to give these foods a new importance in the future guidelines.

So, what is the case for abandoning skim milk and other low -fat alternatives?

Richard Bruno, professor of human nutrition at Ohio State University, says that the field of nutrition has been fighting this issue for many years.

“There has been a lot of controversy,” said Bruno, who is the author of many studies on the subject.

Opinions have evolved in recent years because researchers have started to learn “the saturated fat fats do not seem to behave as we think that it should behave, depending on the historical evidence that saturated fats are linked to heart disease,” he said.

Because dairy products are such a large category – and the fat content varies considerably between foods such as milk, yogurt and cheese – it is difficult to make radical statements. However, Bruno and others on the ground say that once you have searched in the data, the justification of a growing recommendation to promote skimmed milk and low -fat dairy products moves away quickly.

“If we say that low fats are better than rich fats, we must have studies demonstrating that black and white because guidelines should be based on evidence,” explains Benoît Lamarche, who heads the Center for Nutrition, Health and Society in Quebec and is a professor at Laval University.

This is why Lamarche gathered leaders in the field of nutrition last year, many of whom had worked on food directives, to pour evidence on dairy fat and its link with cardiometabolic health.

Their conclusion?

“The evidence shows that they have the same effect and that the evidence is of low quality and there are only a few studies that have examined this,” he said.

Lamarche says that the argument against full dairy products is largely “circumstantial”.

Previous research has shown that people who were at a higher risk of heart disease tended to have a food model that included more complete dairy products, but there were other factors – and food in their diet – which could explain this observation.

“We do not have strict and rigorous evidence that opposes the two types of dairy products and their effect on health,” he says, “we have to stop distracting people with this recommendation.”

Some recent studies have even pointed out that the consumption of higher dairy products is not only neutral, but, in some cases, can Also carry advantages beyond low fat options, at least when they are part of a healthy food model.

A small test revealed that the participants who followed the “DASH” regime – developed by scientists from the National Institutes of Health to reduce hypertension – and substituted dairy products rich in fats had comparable improvements in blood pressure than those who ate low -fat dairy products and better levels of blood lipids, which is a factor of risk of heart disease.

Another study that followed 18 adults in Europe for three weeks revealed that consumption of whole milk has actually surpassed skim milk when it comes to raising HDL, or “good” cholesterol.

Bruno says that the hypothesis is that certain bioactive components of the milk fat membrane such as phospholipids “attenuate all the putative risks which would be associated with this higher contribution of saturated fats”.

The key, he says, seems to be the way dairy fat is delivered.

For example, research shows that butter – also derived from dairy products but mainly composed of fats and water – has the predicted negative consequences on cholesterol; However, this is not true when people consume the same amount of saturated fat in the form of cheese, which is accompanied by calcium, proteins, minerals and other components.

In fact, Lamarche notes that there are solid evidence from observational studies according to which cheese is associated with a lower risk of stroke.

“Is it real or confused by something else?” he said. “We do not know, but the data is quite consistent on this subject.”

Likewise, there is a well documented link between yogurt and type 2 diabetes, which led the food and drug administration to publish a health affirmation on these products (although, of course, the universe of yogurt includes everything, from Greek yogurt to whole milk to varieties not in sugar).

While some recent trials examining higher dairy products are promising, Bruno believes that it is “premature to have a single recommendation that consumers should promote complete fat compared to non-large”.

Even with regard to milk, evidence is thin in both directions, and Lamarche argues that advice in the United States and Canada should be agnostic on the issue for the moment, until there is better data.

In its reports, the scientific advisory committee which provides advice for the federal government on the 2025 food directives has decided not to modify the existing recommendations in support of low -fat milk because it “could not draw a conclusion on the relationship between the consumption of milk with different fats” – advice that Kennedy could very well ignore its public comments denigrating the scientific report.

Frank Hu, President of the Harvard Department of Harvard Th Chan School of Public Health, should still be clear, which means that there is no reason to start promoting full -fledged dairy products, especially since a glass of milk and whole cheese is delivered with more global calories and saturated fats.

In his mind, the much more important problem is that Americans mainly consume dairy products in the form of pizza, burgers, sandwiches and other foods that are “loaded with sodium, refined starch and transformed meat”.

In this context, it probably does not make much difference if the cheese you eat is low in fat or rich fats. On the other hand, it is relatively easy to “incorporate a moderate quantity of dairy products in your overall diet, whether fat or low fat,” he said.

“If you replace your carbohydrates, especially refined carbohydrates and sugar, with dairy products, even full dairy products, is probably a good thing.”