
Whole milk compared with reduced-fat milk and childhood overweight - drocer88
https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ajcn/nqz276/5680464
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danans
High fat anything really. Fat has a very high satiety/calorie ratio vs sugars,
and metabolizes more slowly, keeping you full longer. This is just shaking off
the last vestiges of the 80s anti dietary-fat craze.

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thorwasdfasdf
It's not that simple. Yes, dairy fats lend themselves to satiety but that
doesn't mean all fats do. There's lots of unhealthy fats and even some healthy
ones that don't lend themselves to higher satiety: take a look at the Holtz
Satiety studies:
[http://www.mendosa.com/satiety.htm](http://www.mendosa.com/satiety.htm)

They clearly show Croissants, cakes, Doughnuts and even Peanuts have very low
satiety. Sure, eggs, cheese and beef do okay, but they're still beaten by
apples, oranges, oatmeal and potatoes.

And, let's not loose sight of the fact that health is important too, and
there's lots of fats out there that don't do your health good.

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LennyWhiteJr
> Croissants, cakes, Doughnuts

Those things are also loaded with sugar.

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crgwbr
There are croissant-based-pastries that are high in sugar, but a standard
canonical croissant is savory not sweat. It’s basically just butter, flour,
water, and yeast.

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falcolas
One of the lede's that was buried slightly is that "whole milk" is _only_
3.25% milkfat. So, going from 2% to whole milk is a miniscule increase in the
total amount of milkfat consumed.

This surprised many of my relatives when I brought it up with them, who
thought it was an increase to over 25% milkfat.

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ksec
Want to add a few things.

>"whole milk" is only 3.25% milkfat

It is only in Canada and US whole milk is 3.25%. In UK, and I believe EU as
well it is 3.5%.

>whole milk is a miniscule increase in the total amount of milkfat consumed.

This causes my brain to explode for a bit. A 2% to 3.25% is 62.5% increase in
total amount of milk fat. Which is not really minuscule increase. At the same
time I totally understand what you meant.

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falcolas
It’s an increase of 1.25% of milkfat across the entire product. It’s one half
a teaspoon more milkfat in an 8 oz glass of milk.

As a point of comparison with another milky product - the flavored latte -
flavor shots are 1/2 an oz (2.5 tsp) each, and two are added to an 8oz latte.

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ropiwqefjnpoa
It's good to avoid anything that sells itself as "low-fat" unless it comes
that way naturally.

Often you'll find that "low-fat" means high sugar.

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radicaldreamer
This could be due to the vitamin additives required for reduced fat milk but
not for whole milk in the US. Particularly Vitamin A palmitate, which is a
controversial substance due to some cancer correlations in mice.

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LennyWhiteJr
I keep trying to get my in-laws to drink whole milk but they've had it beat
into their head for decades that dietary fat = bad so they continue to drink
gallons of skim milk. May as well drink water!

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anthonypasq
If they drink gallons of whole milk they will gain weight.

What is the issue with skim milk? It tastes like milk but has less calories.

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falcolas
Personal opinion: Skim milk tastes like a distant relative to whole milk. That
3.25% milkfat makes a major change in the taste of the product. It's like
adding butter to a recipe - it's the fat that really adds to the taste.

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gnicholas
So should we keep our kids on whole fat milk, or is 2% good enough? That is,
what does the correlation/curve look like? Is the takeaway just that we should
avoid fat free milk?

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milesvp
You can almost think of fat free milk as juice with protein. both lactose and
fructose require the liver to metabolize to glucose. The fat free milk, has
some protein to help slow down the absorbtion of the lactose, so it’ll be a
slower carb than pure juice. The fat slows down the carb even more since the
glycemic index of a food tends to be anti correlated with the proportion of
carbs to other things (including non soluble fiber). More fat slower carb.
Generally the slower the carb the slower the insulin response as well. And
it’s insulin that triggers cells to ingest glucose. Which means the faster the
carb the faster the blood glucose rollercoaster. And the more frequent the
urge to eat, potentially leading to obesity (and increasing issues with
insulin resistance).

Now having said all that I personally suspect whole milk is the way to go, but
I don’t know the actual proportion. I’d expect whole milk to be correct for
calfs, and if you really wanted to be correct for children, you’d look at the
fat content of breast milk.

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mdanger007
These headlines need help. A laymen's term for "adiposity" could save me a
google and it wouldn't hurt my nerd feelings.

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throwaway5752
Changing headlines is discouraged in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
("Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or
linkbait; don't editorialize.")

This is a link to a scientific journal, so the context is experts in the field
that are familiar with the jargon. If you look at
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3063466/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3063466/)
it's a fairly technical term that roughly means "obesity".

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exegete
The title on HN right now is not the title of the article (“ Whole milk
compared with reduced-fat milk and childhood overweight: a systematic review
and meta-analysis”).

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throwaway5752
You are completely right, looks like they took the first line of the
conclusion instead. Thank you!

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ncphillips
This makes sense to me. My understanding is that consuming sugar has a much
higher impact on obesity then consuming fat, and that low-fat milk usually has
added sugar to make up for the flavour-loss from removing the fat. I am not
exactly well studied in this area though.

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cs02rm0
I don't think that's the case in the UK at least.

However the sugar level is higher per fixed volume because the removal of the
fat increases the concentration of what remains.

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ncphillips
Perhaps that’s what they were saying. My memory of this idea is not great, but
it’s the same here in Canada as the UK.

