
For decades, government steered millions away from whole milk. Was that wrong? - prostoalex
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/10/06/for-decades-the-government-steered-millions-away-from-whole-milk-was-that-wrong/
======
codyb
I love whole milk. Plain and simple. It's delicious. It's got a ton of good
fat and protein in it. My entire family drinks it and always has. We're all of
healthy weight (my brother and I are actually pretty skinny, although he has a
bit of a gut now that he's 32, I'm still 25 and because of handstands and pull
ups you can see my abs a bit).

We also eat very healthy in general as a family. Lots of pasta with clam
sauce, red sauce, alfredo sauce. Lots of vegetables. Avocados. Clementines.

And we all lead healthy lifestyles in regards to exercise. Lots of musical
instruments being played, hiking, canoeing, walking, and biking.

So, I'm not sure what my comment is here really, but the moral of the story
seems to be for me: If you eat healthy foods (and don't eat too many processed
items), and if you partake in healthy activities, you'll probably end up
pretty healthy.

How much of it is genes? I have no idea.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Sometimes genes are a good bit of it. In my family we have ~150lb people who
eat endlessly, thousands of calories a day. 6 ft tall, thin as a rail. Many of
them. So that's got to be genes.

~~~
dragonwriter
Or, you know, behavioral things like activity patterns, which can be quite
heavily influenced by culture even at the level of a family, without being
genetic. Or gut flora, which, though there are good reasons that they can tend
to be quite closely similar in families, are environmental rather than
genetic.

"X seems particularly common in family" does not imply "X is genetic".

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Cool; thanks! Didn't consider all that. For us, activity isn't the factor. We
were all pretty sedentary as kids. If gut flora is environmental, then that's
a no-go since we span 5 states. So in our case, genes is the winner so far.

~~~
dragonwriter
> If gut flora is environmental, then that's a no-go since we span 5 states.

Its environmental, but one of the key environments for transferring them is
mother-to-child, particularly at birth.

A lot of things that are environmental rather than genetic are shaped
particularly strongly by the _early_ (prenatal, perinatal, or early childhood)
environment, which can confound efforts to intuit the degree to which a
feature is genetic vs. environmental based on unstructured observations of the
degree to which it seems to be associated with families.

------
jobu
_" [Whole milk] was banned from school lunch programs."_

Most schools don't even have 1% milk, but they all have chocolate milk with
tons of added sugar. Great healthy choice there.

~~~
blt
Gah, school lunches and nutritional recommendations make me so mad.

Everyone thought eggs and butter were unhealthy too. 6-11 servings of grain
though! The "food pyramid" was beaten into my head repeatedly as a child, with
some suspicious board of agriculture sponsored exercises too. Turns out it was
total bullshit.

We feed our kids the worst garbage, at least we did from 1992-2005. A nation
should want its kids to grow up big and strong. But nope, let em eat french
fries and pears in heavy syrup.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Times changed. The Pentagon (who owns school lunch program) set their
standards because they rejected too many recruits for malnutrition in WWII,
usually insufficient calories/stunted growth.

The 50's saw that change with widespread refrigeration and more varied diets.
The standards should have changed but once instituted change comes hard.

Now the Pentagon responds to obesity by restricting school lunch calories.
Misguided in my opinion; school kids are growing fast and need _good
calories_. Restrict calories at lunch, and the kids eat junk after school to
make up for it. I would much rather schools provided unrestricted salad bars
etc. instead of trying to put all the kids on a diet.

~~~
blt
Yes that is absurd. So absurd. I would be furious if I were a parent.

The real reason? Good calories are expensive.

------
acacia314
I've switch my family to all whole-milk unhomogenized dairy products (if I can
find it). Why should I pay more for less calories and modified fat?

~~~
bradleyjg
Homogenization just mixes the fat it into the milk. What do you do with it?

~~~
acacia314
It is more than mixing. It is a reduction in the size of the fat molecules
which changes the way the fat acts in the mixture. Shaking the milk before
drinking is not the same thing.

~~~
vonmoltke
Creating an emulsion, which is exactly what homogenization is, does not do
anything to the molecules. It reduces the size of the clumps of molecules,
which simply allows it to exist in a consistent suspension. It has no effects
whatsoever on how those compounds behave in the digestive tract.

~~~
tomkinstinch
Right. Homogenization should not impact fatty acid chain length. Dairy systems
are complicated though, and there are protein interactions that help the
emulsion by supporting the formation of micelles[1]. It's the same stuff after
pasteurization, just distributed differently.

Pasteurization is an entirely different matter though. Heat treatment will
convert some fraction of lactose into smaller sugars, including its
constituent galactose and glucose[2]. This is why ultra-pasteurized can taste
a bit sweeter than untreated milk. Pasteurization also inactivates lipases
which would otherwise cleave the fat molecules, reducing the likelihood of
rancidity[3].

1\.
[https://books.google.com/books?id=1OhFPZ7tFz8C&pg=PA864&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=1OhFPZ7tFz8C&pg=PA864&lpg=PA864&dq=homogenization+micelle&source=bl&ots=TijzrSunwJ&sig=5jv8hG6VbC4dScg0Ddie4h1uw70&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CE8Q6AEwB2oVChMIts3L-9i1yAIVBhkeCh2CWQmm#v=onepage&q=homogenization%20micelle&f=false)

2\.
[https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=6Q8mX8DsDe4C&oi=...](https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=6Q8mX8DsDe4C&oi=fnd&pg=PR13&dq=pasteurization+dairy+lactose+glucose&ots=kyJLjSE6AZ&sig=L1ziZX3JRl2AXNFY0GEeS7vjzcM#v=onepage&q=pasteurization%20dairy%20lactose%20glucose&f=false)

3\. [https://books.google.com/books?id=gJ6jA7LG-
bsC&pg=PA276&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=gJ6jA7LG-
bsC&pg=PA276&lpg=PA276&dq=dairy+homogenization+chain+lengths&source=bl&ots=AV7I1-NGVn&sig=gI5ncJwP22hvc0A9WuVyHs_ZOYk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAjgKahUKEwjz1J_U17XIAhXGph4KHVZSA_o#v=onepage&q=dairy%20homogenization%20chain%20lengths&f=false)

~~~
reitanqild
How did you learn?

I learned about lipase when I was a kid and followed my dad around at the
farm. According to him it was the lipase in the homogenized whole milk that
made the difference in taste that I recognized between milk from the storage
tank on the farm and bought milk.

Reading up on it now it seems to be a bit more complicated but still.

~~~
tomkinstinch
From a quick reading it looks like homogenization may make fatty acids more
accessible to lipase (greater accessible surface area, maybe also charge
interactions?). Of course enzyme activity is also a function of pH and
temperature. If it was a chilled storage tank, perhaps the taste was different
because lipase had not yet had a chance to work--if homogenization happens
before pastuerization, it could cause some breakdown after storage but before
heat-moderated lipase inactivation.

I have some formal training in biology, but I'm certainly no expert and may be
incorrect. What I do know is that _dairy systems are complicated_.

------
mywittyname
The problem, IMHO, is that dietary science makes recommendations based on
gross over-simplifications. Creating guidelines based on such overly
simplistic grouping of information leads to sub-optimal results because it
glosses over important nuances.

The saturated v. unsaturated distinction is one that we are finally realizing
is not an important to overall health. However, this has been replaced by
another is the trans fat v. cis fat distinction.

The government is pushing for the removal of trans fats from foods without
consideration to the fact that vaccenic acid is a trans fat that is extremely
good for mammals (it's found in high quantities in breast milk, for instance)
while elaidic acid is what has been linked to low HDL and heart disease.

Of course, the population as a whole is no better. They also cherry-pick
things they want to be healthy with little consideration of the science behind
it. So I'm not sure this is an issue that needs addressing.

------
zamalek
According to a front page article this week, milk contains a progenitor to
NAD. There may be no causation, but it's an intriguing correlation.

~~~
jobu
NAD?

~~~
zamalek
[http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/20/anti-
ageing-h...](http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/20/anti-ageing-human-
trials)

------
clarkmoody
For decades, government ______ only to find out later that it was really bad.

The social engineering has got to stop. A free people should not be subject to
the latest schemes of self-appointed masterminds. The most evident and
dangerous venue for such engineering is the public schools, in which the
government subjects _our children_ to every sort of social experiment, and
what have we to show for it?

~~~
ceejayoz
> The most evident and dangerous venue for such engineering is the public
> schools, in which the government subjects our children to every sort of
> social experiment, and what have we to show for it?

First two to spring to mind: A dramatic drop in violent crime since the 1970s
because the "self-appointed masterminds" restricted lead. A dramatic drop in
road deaths because the "self-appointed masterminds" required seatbelts,
airbags, and crash standards.

~~~
ashark
I think the key argument in favor of the usefulness of these sorts of policies
is that if I had to worry about all this stuff myself it would take _a ton of
time_ and I'd almost certainly _still_ do a worse job than government
regulators.

That regulators make mistakes, even fairly often, doesn't necessarily convince
me my life would be better without them.

------
blt
If you want a treat, try taking a sip of half-and-half before you pour it in
your coffee...

~~~
mullen
Put it on your cereal for a real delight.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Better: whipped cream on corn flakes!

------
ElijahLynn
Drinking the milk from another species designed to grow that species babies is
wrong. Would you even drink human milk designed for human babies as a grown
adult?

~~~
iamcurious
I know! and so is eating honey! eating food designed for a baby bee to grow is
wrong. /s

~~~
natch
Just don't give honey to baby people.

Totally not what you were saying, I get that, but I think it's always a good
public service type message to spread.

[http://www.benefits-of-honey.com/honey-and-infant.html](http://www.benefits-
of-honey.com/honey-and-infant.html)

~~~
DanBC
That link doesn't mention the dental hygiene problems of sugar. So, even when
your child is over 12 months it's probably a good idea to minimise the amount
of honey they eat.

