More Counterintuitive Advice: More fat = Less fat.

When my sons were in high school we hosted a foreign exchange student.

In hosting a foreign exchange student, you also get to know the other foreign exchange students that are going to school in the same area. One of the other nearby foreign exchange students was from Turkey. He was so confused by the non-fat milk we drank.

"In Turkey, we think the more fat in the milk, the better!" he told us. "There are billboards to sell milk that say 'More fat!' Everybody wants more fat in their milk!"

NPR ran a story this week about recent studies that suggest consuming whole fat dairy products is linked to reduced body fat.

This is exciting news for me. I love milk. I try to make a point of drinking a pint a day. I am not going to be a hunchbacked old woman, suffering from osteoporosis. And don't tell me about how much calcium there is in spinach. Milk tastes better. I've been drinking non-fat milk since I was a child. Whole milk - especially served ice cold - tastes so much better.

(Incidentally, I mostly limit my dairy intake to milk only. No cheese, no yogurt. I do use butter on occasion.)

This counterintuitive phenomenon is well documented, though not yet explainable. It may be a satiety factor - whole milk makes you feel full faster, so you eat less. Or,

"...the explanation could be more complex. There may be bioactive substances in the milk fat that may be altering our metabolism in a way that helps us utilize the fat and burn it for energy, rather than storing it in our bodies."

The comments to this story reflect interesting attitudes, especially emphasizing the difference between European and American diets, attitudes and lifestyles. Good questions are asked: What about people who don't drink milk at all? Were they even included in the studies? Good points are made: Perhaps obese people drink more low-fat milk because, well, they are trying to lose weight. And perhaps people on the thin side feel free to drink more whole milk because it is more satisfying, and they don't feel the need to lose weight.

Then there's this:

"The way journalists report on science contributes to the confusion about nutrition. We over-report the latest findings. Science is this process where hypotheses are advanced, and then they get knocked down. But you lose track of that when they run the big story on page 1: “Study of Low-Fat Diets Finds They Don’t Really Work.” That makes it sound like a consensus has formed. You look more closely and you realize, well, that’s not really what that proved. It really proved that it’s very hard to get people to go on a low-fat diet. The people in that study didn’t really reduce their fat intake that much. We’ve tended to amplify a very uncertain science."

Michael Pollan Debunks Food Myths, Feb 22 2008

Maybe it is hyped-up science. But maybe there is something here worth further in-depth study of milk fat and body chemistry. Me, I'm going to conduct my own experiment and try drinking whole milk at home instead of non-fat.

I love experiments that are delicious.