For more than a decade health authorities have insisted adults go lean and ditch the cream. Even the latest dietary guidelines for Australians still make this message clear.
But recent research, based on a large population study shows that full-fat dairy isn’t so bad for you after all — that is, full fat drinkers tend to weigh less and have a reduced risk of diabetes.
Should guidelines be changed?
Before we criticise national dietary recommendations it’s important to understand why low fat dairy is still advised. Full cream dairy foods are a significant source of saturated fat and over the last few decades the focus has been on reducing this type of fat in our diets to stave off heart attacks — this meant all sources of saturated fat were evil, including full cream milk.
However, it is now well known that not all fats are equal, and certain types of saturated fats don’t raise LDL cholesterol (as previously thought) — and if it comes from dairy, studies are now showing it may have a protective role.
We now understand that making recommendations based on a single nutrient is getting us nowhere. We don’t eat nutrients like saturated fat in isolation. Rather, it’s the type of food as a whole and the other nutrients present within that food that makes a difference as to how that food affects health.
In other words, no foods are nutritionally equivalent if you’re judging only their content of saturated fat.
So if you were to compare butter to full-cream milk, the research is clear that the fat extracted from milk to make butter does raise LDL-cholesterol, however when present along with calcium and protein (as in dairy foods), it does not.
Source: NZHerald
Link: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=11701191&ref=NZH_Tw
