
Drinking 1% rather than 2% milk accounts for 4.5 years of less aging in adults - lelf
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-01-accounts-years-aging-adults.html
======
jimmar
> "If someone asked me to put together a presentation on the value of drinking
> milk, I could put together a 1-hour presentation that would knock your socks
> off. You'd think, 'Whoa, everybody should be drinking more milk.' If someone
> said do the opposite, I could also do that.

Pretty much sums up the state of nutrition science.

~~~
mberning
Yep. And this story is some “John Tesh Radio Show” tier fluff.

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
I wonder if the scientist in question doesn't know of the possibility of
confounders, didn't mention them to the reporter, or the reporter just didn't
think that was exciting enough to include in the article. It seems just
possible that there is something about 1% fat milk drinkers that is different
from 2% fat milk drinkers, which causes them to drink 1% fat milk and which
also causes them to have longer telomeres. Unfortunately, there is no link to
the study, so we can't see what was controlled for. But if I were a betting
man I'd bet that most of the difference is caused by other causes than the
difference in milk drinking.

~~~
coffeecat
I think this is correct. The non-milk-drinkers had telomere lengths between
those of the reduced-fat and the full-fat groups, which leads me to conclude
that among milk-drinkers, those who go for the reduced-fat milk tend to live a
healthier overall lifestyle. Those who go for the full-fat milk tend to live a
less healthy lifestyle. The non-milk-drinker category is a mixed bag, since
the preferred-fat-percent variable is lost.

------
purerandomness
Alternative hypothesis: People who choose to trade flavour for lower milk fat
tend to also be more risk-aware, prefer a healthier lifestyle (don't smoke,
work out) which contribute to slower telomere shortening.

People who chose flavour over lower milk fat would probably self-describe as
"living the moment", likely tend to favour short-time gratification more, and
do more activities that lead to faster telomere shortening.

~~~
elsewhen
the researchers took steps to mitigate the potential effects of confounding
variables:

[https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/](https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/)

~~~
mattrp
Serious question - would it make these studies more accurate if in addition,
the scientists were also able to control for differences in dna? ie, maybe
protein absorption is not as good in a significant amount of the tested
population for this study.

------
tedd4u
But, "Kids who drank whole milk were at a 39 percent reduced risk for being
overweight than those who drank low-fat milk"?

From just 8 days ago.

Really getting tired of these conflicting narrow food/health studies.

NYT: Whole Milk May Be Better When It Comes to Children’s Weight

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/well/whole-milk-may-be-
be...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/well/whole-milk-may-be-better-when-
it-comes-to-childrens-weight.html)

~~~
sp332
The article specifically says "in adults", so it's not conflicting.

~~~
tedd4u
True, and my frustration probably shows. I shouldn't rant.

Maybe the finding is drink whole milk until 18 to lower risk of obesity then
switch to 1% to slow effects of aging.

What I'd like to see is a reliable source that synthesizes recent,
reproducible research into cogent diet recommendations. Anyone aware of such a
source?

In the meantime, I'd prefer not to be pestered by narrow tree-instead-of-the-
forest articles that seem to be published every week with hyperspecific diet
research. Up to me to ignore them I guess instead of ranting.

Still I thought this was an especially poignant example of research
popularized just a few weeks apart that could understandably leave many people
wondering what action to take or reducing confidence in diet research in
general.

~~~
CuriousSkeptic
NNR 2012 is pretty good [https://www.norden.org/en/publication/nordic-
nutrition-recom...](https://www.norden.org/en/publication/nordic-nutrition-
recommendations-2012)

------
_bxg1
I wonder if anyone's studied the effect that keeping up with nutrition studies
has on lifespan.

~~~
colechristensen
There's a study I want to see. Mortality rate broken down by cause compared to
health enthusiasm rated by sect.

Or even simpler, compared to book ownership. Pick a few hundred of the most
popular health books and track a population of owners and their cause of death
or significant health events.

------
ameixaseca
Just opened the study and read a bit about the methods and I wonder why they
didn't include people that do not drink milk so the telomere lengths could be
compared.

We cannot know if milk (in general or 1%) is causing aging or protecting
against it, cases which point for very different conclusions.

This table also has something interesting that corroborates with this idea:

[https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/tab4/](https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/tab4/)

Note how the ones that rarely drink any milk have the same telomere lengths,
same as the ones that drink full fat or 2% milk. SE is also so big for 1% and
non-fat on the "rarely" row that telomere lengths can be considered to be the
same for all the columns (on this row).

It makes me wonder if it's the milk or if there is any other covariable that
is playing a role here. In fact, they themselves cite this in the study
("Discussion" section):

"However, it is possible that other dietary differences account for some of
the biological aging differences among the milk fat categories."

Therefore, I'd take this study with a grain of salt. If anything can be
concluded by these numbers is that 1% milk may be protective, not that full-
fat milk promotes aging.

------
acd10j
I hate food science, Just few weeks back had switched from 1% milk to full fat
milk by reading one another article which states opposite. That sugar lobby
has demonised fat and actually consuming non skimmed milk reduces craving. So
you do less beinge eating. Now this is opposite!!

~~~
hombre_fatal
Now look up dairy lobbying. I'd wean off cows' milk entirely if you don't like
to be manipulated.

------
fermenflo
I know everyone's reaction (mine included) was: "No shit, people who drink
low-fat milk probably live healthier lives in general"... But it looks like
they really did account for other variables and found that milk-fat percentage
was the only strong factor in play:

> "High-fat milk consumers may have lifestyles that are less healthy than low-
> fat milk drinkers. Since this possibility was recognized before the onset of
> the investigation, statistical adjustments were made for a dozen potential
> confounders. Statistical analyses determined that these variables had little
> influence on the milk fat and telomere relationship. Nevertheless, other
> variables could explain some of the relationship between milk fat intake and
> telomere length identified in the present investigation."

Source:
[https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/](https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/)

~~~
rwallace
Okay, but let's stop and think about it for ten seconds: _Of course_ drinking
a slightly different brand of milk doesn't make you live 4.5 years longer; the
headline claim is obvious nonsense. (And as I understand it, it's now thought
that to the extent there is any difference, it's in favor of the high-fat
milk.)

So then the conclusion seems to be that confounding factors have an extremely
strong effect on the conclusion, even when the investigators have tried hard
to screen them out.

Why? What went wrong with the attempts to screen out the confounding factors?

~~~
fermenflo
To be fair, it's a pretty large claim to just assume that something "went
wrong with the attempts to screen out the confounding factors" and that the
conclusion _must be_ false.

It's a shocking conclusion, I'll give you that. And to be honest, I'm not
convinced either. You might very well be right. But it's a strong claim to
make agains a peer-reviewed journal publication.

~~~
gus_massa
> _But it 's a strong claim to make against a peer-reviewed journal
> publication._

Remember that peer-review only means that two or three persons had read the
manuscript and found no obvious error and think it's inteligible and
interesting. It doesn't mean that the reviewers had reproducer and checked all
the details.

It is more trustworthy that a webpage in all-caps with white text over a black
background, but it depends a lot of the journal. There are serious journals,
and there are crappy journal that publish any rubbish if you pay them.

This is not may area, so I'm not sure. I looked at the other articles
published in the journal and they look fine, but this is not my area.
(Crackpot articles tend to aggregate, so looking at the other articles is
sometimes useful.)

It's is very strange that an article about 5834 persons has only one author.
Again, this is not may area, but I'd expect 5 or 6 authors. (The other
articles in the journal have multiple authors.) It's not a smoking gun, but
it's _very_ strange.

In the article, the more interesting part is table 4
[https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/tab4/](https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/tab4/)
It looks fine. I didn't redo all the calculations, but it looks fine. (It may
be a professional defect I have, but for me most articles are "Bla bla, bla
bla, _important table_ , bla bla.".) The table looks nice.

Also, they are measuring telomere length, not a self reported coefficient. I
never trust self reported data. (Some of the covariant they use are difficult
to measure like "percentage of total energy derived from saturated fat". How
did they measure that? Anyway, I don't expect that to be a problem.)

It's important to wait until the study has been reproduced. (Exact
reproductions are difficult to finance and publish, but you can make a twist.
For example comparing the four combinations of normal vs cocoa milk and 1% vs
2% milk.)

@GP: Note that the (research) article does not claim that you live 4.5 years
longer. They claim that the telomeres are reduced approximately 145 bases,
that is somehow equivalent to 4.5 years of aging. Probably having 145 less
bases in the telomeres increase some illness, but I doubt it affect too much
the accident death rate.

------
AceyMan
Serious question: is 1% milkfat known to be "more healthy" than 2%? The body
needs fats, and the USA (most of all) is still recovering from an unhealthy
fear of fats instilled by the megacorps the past ~30 years. [me: grew up
drinking 2% until I was fully grown / 18yrs]

~~~
2OEH8eoCRo0
It's become more complicated:

[https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/are-fats-
so-b...](https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/are-fats-so-bad)

------
scythe
The study:

[https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/](https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/)

>Effect modification testing indicated that the milk fat and cellular aging
association may be partly due to saturated fat intake differences across the
milk fat groups. When the sample was delimited to adults reporting only high
total saturated fat intake (tertile 3), the milk fat and telomere relationship
was strong. However, when the sample was restricted to adults reporting only
low saturated fat consumption (tertile 1), there was no relationship between
milk fat intake and telomere length.

~~~
rhacker
Wow, if the creator of this website is reading - please stop with the crazy
locked headers and auto-adjusting panels on the top and bottom.

------
markstos
This is consistent with other research that found that vegans live about 10
years longer on average. It seems no-milk is even better for longevity than
low-fat milk.

[https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-
families...](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-
families/health-news/vegan-meat-life-expectancy-eggs-dairy-
research-a7168036.html)

~~~
chrisco255
India has the highest percentage of vegetarians of any country (at 38% of the
population), yet they rank 128th out of 185 countries in life expectancy.
Meanwhile, you look at the top 10 countries for life expectancy, and there's
plenty of meat in the diet, including Hong Kong, who eat more fish and beef
than Americans do, and Iceland, who consume at least 200 pounds of fish a
year:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy)

~~~
wolco
Are you accounting for lead poisoning or mercury poisoning which seems common.

~~~
scarejunba
A quick quality check is Tamil Nadu v Karnataka (two neighbouring Indian
states that are very similar).

Tamil Nadu (3% vegetarianism) - 70 years

Karnataka (21% vegetarianism) - 68.8 years

Doesn't look like I'd look there for life extension.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_states_by_life_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_states_by_life_expectancy_at_birth)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country#India](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country#India)

------
colechristensen
I am at the point where I don't believe any food or drug research and
reporting has practical value outside cases where a linear relation between
substance and effect is established and at a high enough dose the effect kills
you.

The literature is full of fishing expeditions for premeditated statistically
significant results. People seem to choose a belief set which is intuitively
appealing to them (bonus points if it can make them feel like they are morally
superior) and then write and share volumes which poorly represent weak
research as gospel.

This report should say the opposite, more accurate "People with shorter
telomeres prefer higher fat milk". There is no evidence presented that would
indicate you can influence your telomeres by choosing different milk or that
milk choice is actually the culprit.

Biology-substance-effect research and especially reporting is strongly biased
towards telling a good story and the motivations driving that bias strongly
devalue the results.

------
miles
Study Suggests Milk Doesn't Strengthen Your Bones - It Ages You Instead
[https://www.sciencealert.com/study-suggests-milk-doesnt-
stre...](https://www.sciencealert.com/study-suggests-milk-doesnt-strengthen-
your-bones-it-ages-you-instead)

> _We’ve been brought up to think that drinking milk is good for our bones,
> but new research suggests that not only is this false, but the sugars in it
> may actually be accelerating the ageing process._

~~~
markstos
The large scale China Study had negative finds on human's drinking milk
intended as a baby cow growth hormone as well: "Dr. Campbell says that in
multiple, peer-reviewed animal studies, researchers discovered that they could
actually turn the growth of cancer cells on and off by raising and lowering
doses of casein, the main protein found in cow’s milk." Ref:
[https://www.wellandgood.com/good-food/china-study-cheat-
shee...](https://www.wellandgood.com/good-food/china-study-cheat-
sheet-10-things-you-need-to-know/)

~~~
wirrbel
Dr. Jason Fung often shows a graph from a study showing that Osteoporosis
increased in Greece over the years, correlated to the increase in milk
consumption.

------
kleer001
Link if anyone wants to read the actual paper:
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336877579_Milk_Fat_...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336877579_Milk_Fat_Intake_and_Telomere_Length_in_US_Women_and_Men_The_Role_of_the_Milk_Fat_Fraction)

Also:

Conflicts of Interest: The author declares no conﬂict of interest.

------
dannykwells
Without a biological mechanism this is just a correlation, no matter how much
statistical correction they claimed to do.

------
robwwilliams
Not probable and highly likely to be confounded by secular and social
cofactors. These dietary models and recommendations in humans are dumb “one
size fits all”. We know from extensive animal research that genome-by-
environmental effects are pervasive and can be large. For example in a highly
diverse family of mice, a very high fat diet—60% calories from lard—is
advantageous in terms of longevity in a few family members; although also true
that this extreme diet is generally deleterious (see bioRxiv paper by Suheeta
Roy and colleagues, GXE BXD study, 2019).

The contrast between whole milk and no-fat milk is a comparatively subtle
dietary shift.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, especially when they can
impact millions of humans.

~~~
elsewhen
the researchers took steps to mitigate the potential effects of confounding
variables. here is a link to the full study:

[https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/](https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/)

------
Y_Y
I knew my grandma who spent her life drinking 4% whole milk should have lived
another twenty years!

------
iron0013
I hope people will follow the link to the actual research before commenting,
because it addresses almost all of the objections that I’m seeing pop up
repeatedly here:
[https://www.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/](https://www.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/)

A smallish red flag from a scientist’s perspective is that the article was
published by a publisher based out of a developing country. There’s nothing
wrong with that per se, but in practice it often reflects a paper that for one
reason or another couldn’t get published in more well-known higher impact
factor journals

------
chrisbigelow
> "there was no relationship between milk fat and telomere length when total
> saturated fat intake was low, but the association was strong when total
> saturated fat intake was high."

Seems more to do with high saturated fat intake.

------
MrDresden
Consumption of a near 0% fat cheese called Skyr has historically been high
since the 11th century in Iceland. I do wonder if that may have had a role to
play in our high average age expectancy.

Sadly our traditional food culture of Skyr, lean grass fed sheep and plenty of
fish has given way to a more Americanized fast food culture. So it wouldn't
surprise me if our averages will start trending downwards in a generation or
two.

------
shadykiller
This is a useless research and doesn't prove anything.

Milk fat sourced from grass fed cows is actually pretty rich in healthy fats
like Omega 3, CLA and Butyric acid. In fact many people who can't tolerate
milk, can easily digest milk fats like butter and ghee which are devoid of the
usual milk allergens (Lactose and Casein)

------
hinkley
I kinda wish they'd speculated on a cause and effect chain here, but then we'd
have a different group of readers upset.

I might also like to see results with other kinds of fats, to know if it's
something about milkfat in particular.

There was a theory a while back that the lipid size in homogenized milk might
be problematic for the human digestive and circulatory system, causing them to
get into places they shouldn't.

If that were true, I suppose you could explain these results by showing a link
between early cardiovascular disease (CVD) and shortening of telomeres. But it
looks like we have a bunch of studies showing shorter telomeres leads to CVD,
not vice versa (although we've gotten cause and effect backward before so who
knows at this point).

------
minikites
Better yet, don't drink milk at all, it's unhealthy in the same ways as soda
and fruit juice (milk does have a lot of sugar which I don't think a lot of
people think about).

Don't drink your calories.

------
sfotm
When it comes to studies that involve measuring telomeres as a result, I've
always wondered: is telomere length such a foolproof measure that it can be
used to make claims like this? Given two people who will live their entire
natural lifespan and have no complications, will the one with shorter
telomeres necessarily die first? Are there tolerances of some kind?

------
Raphmedia
Does this study take into account other variables? The article also says that
people who do not drink milk have shorter telomeres.

Could it be that people who drink 0% and 1% milk also eat fewer foods high in
fat and sugar (or are more aware of their diet in other ways) compared to the
average (i.e., those who do not drink milk and those who drink the most common
milk available)?

~~~
iron0013
The paper is open access, fortunately, so you can go view the list of
covariates that were included in the model at the link

------
malvosenior
I don't know enough about chemistry to say, but does steaming milk (like for a
latte) have any effect on its health properties? I ask because for milk based
coffee drinks you _really_ want to be using whole milk. There are no taste and
texture options that get anywhere near it.

~~~
prostheticvamp
Yes. Steaming milk degrades lactose into glucose and galactose, and coagulates
some of the proteins.

~~~
colechristensen
Those aren't health properties, they both happen in your stomach regardless.

~~~
tlbsofware
Unless you are deficient in your production of the enzyme lactase (lactose
intolerant)

------
mattmar96
My immediate thought is, those who grab the 1% milk at the grocery store are
more likely to make other healthy decisions as well. Can anyone comment on
whether the study adjusted for this?

~~~
fermenflo
My immediate reaction as well. Seems like the perfect case of confounding. But
after reading the paper, I saw this statement:

> "High-fat milk consumers may have lifestyles that are less healthy than low-
> fat milk drinkers. Since this possibility was recognized before the onset of
> the investigation, statistical adjustments were made for a dozen potential
> confounders. Statistical analyses determined that these variables had little
> influence on the milk fat and telomere relationship. Nevertheless, other
> variables could explain some of the relationship between milk fat intake and
> telomere length identified in the present investigation."

They didn't go into great detail as to what those confounders were, but it
looks like they took that into account and isolated milk-fat percentage as
well as they could. Source:
[https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/](https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/)

~~~
eej71
It sounds like one must still assume they correctly accounted for all
confounders.

~~~
fermenflo
Exactly. As I said, they didn't reveal much of the process that "accounted for
confounding" but I just wanted to dismiss everyone's initial reaction that
this is just an obvious case of confounding.

Perhaps it is. Perhaps it isn't. It just depends on how much you trust their
methodology.

------
GoToRO
What is the default fat percentage for the milk of a traditional cow?

~~~
dundercoder
3.25% [0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_content_of_milk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_content_of_milk)

------
whb07
I'm gonna go on a limb without looking at this study and propose the following
connection:

The people drinking 1% typically would exercise more and watch overall diet.

Shocking.

~~~
Hello71
> There were a dozen covariates controlled in the present study (age, gender,
> race, household size, smoking, body mass index, MET-minutes of total
> physical activity, alcohol use, grams of protein consumed per kilogram of
> body weight, percentage of energy derived from dietary fat, grams of dietary
> fiber consumed per 1000 kilocalories, and percentage of total energy derived
> from saturated fat.

~~~
dtwest
How would one handle that many factors? I am very curious what the techniques
for doing so would be.

I'm no expert but my initial reaction would be that you need more than 5834
adults in a study that controls for all of those factors. We don't really know
how household size, for example, would affect the results, so wouldn't you
need a bunch of test data to analyze all of the combinations? Or did they only
study people who are the same in most of them? (i.e. 45, male, with a
household size of 4, nonsmoking, etc...)

Would love to hear from someone more informed on this than myself.

~~~
iron0013
It depends on the effect sizes, but in most contexts 5k participants is
considered a very sufficient sample. You don’t need millions of participants
to study things like this.

------
mataug
Classic example of Co-relation doesn't equal Causation

------
gowld
Do people who drink 1% milk eat low fat pizza and yogurt?

Do people who drink a lot of 1% love longer than people who drink a little 2%?
What about 3.5%?

Is this just boring p-hacking?

------
throw0101a
1%? Why bother going half way: just switch to water.

------
jobseeker990
I'm skeptical. I've seen other studies where whole milk has a whole host of
health benefits.

------
tiku
So is drinking 0% milk better than 1%?

~~~
samcal
Drinking no milk at all is best! Reducing dairy intake reduces Parkinson's
disease rate[0], reduces hip fracture rate[1], reduces twinning offspring rate
in women[2], and may even reduce Prostate Cancer[3]. You really don't miss it
after a while, and the most annoying thing is modifying your restaurant orders
to remove all the cheese :/

[0]:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24894826](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24894826)

[1]:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20949604](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20949604)

[2]:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16779988](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16779988)

[3]:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15203374](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15203374)

~~~
boring_twenties
> modifying your restaurant orders to remove all the cheese

I think I might rather have the cancer.

------
davestephens
Using 1% milk means you need twice as much for a decent cup of tea. It's a
false economy.

------
jwatte
:doubt:

------
justboxing
Drinking NO MILK accounts for 8 years of less aging and reduced cases of
Osteoporosis in adults.

