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The Australian dietary guidelines encourage low- or reduced-fat dairy for anyone over the age of two. A Canadian study shoots holes in that advice.
You know the story — full-fat contains more kilojoules/calories along with saturated fat, so it’s a problem for our weight and cholesterol.
The Heart Foundation and the dietary guidelines have had to backtrack on this in recent times though, given study after study has failed to show any link between full-fat dairy and heart disease.
In fact, a higher intake of whole milk dairy tends to be linked with less heart disease.
They like an each-way bet though.
The Heart Foundation, for example, says dairy foods are a good source of protein, vitamins and minerals but “they can also contain unhealthy fats… which can raise LDL (bad) cholesterol levels”.
The Canadian study, by nutrition scientists from Toronto and Halifax, was carried out to test that kind of thinking (Canada’s guidelines look a lot like ours).
Seventy-four people described as “healthy overweight-to-obese men and women aged 25 to 60” were recruited and randomly assigned to one of three groups.
The first group followed a calorie restricted, low-dairy diet. The second one ate three serves of full-fat dairy each day, but their overall dietary intake was managed so they ate the same number of calories in a day as they used. And the third group got to eat three serves of full-fat dairy per day with no calorie restriction.
After three months, that third group showed no real difference in weight, body fat, or cholesterol compared with the calorie restricted low-dairy group. And the two groups who ate more dairy recorded lower blood pressure while taking in more calcium, protein, and vitamin D.
When I first read this, I didn’t think a lot of it. The numbers are low — 74 participants isn’t many (apparently, covid reached Canada as the study started, so there were half the intended number of participants, and it ran for half the time it was meant to).
And at an average age of about 36, the participants were also relatively young.
Despite that, it reinforces that whole foods are more than just a sum of their parts. They’re far more complex, especially when we add fermentation, and avoiding them because of old, unproven theories about saturated fat is unfortunate.
This also has important implications for our nutrition when we’re older and don’t eat as much as we used to. What we do eat has to give us the best bang for our buck.
Food that is satiating, and beneficial for our gut (e.g. the probiotic properties of yoghurt) and bones (calcium and protein), as well as our blood pressure, weight, and cholesterol ticks the right boxes.
The Canadian study is just one of many. An American cardiologist from Tufts University in Massachusetts who looked into 37 clinical trials involving over 180,000 people found that dairy consumption had little effect on BMI and a positive effect on body composition, i.e. less fat and more lean mass.
Older women, however, veer towards the low-fat end of the scale.
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data collected in 2023 and published last month show that as the age category increases for women, more of our dairy consumption is reduced-fat. The peak is among women aged 75 and over whose dairy intake is about 34% lower fat.
Most of us also don’t go close to eating the recommended four serves of dairy per day (on average, according to the ABS, we manage about 1.5).
Among women over 50, most of the dairy consumed comes from milk (64% for women aged 50-64, up to 71% for those 75 and over). Cheese accounts for about 26% in the 50-64 age group, down to 20% in women 75 and over.
Yoghurt makes up about 6-7% for all older groups, and the ‘other’ category comprising calcium enriched alternatives makes up 2.5% for the 50-64 age group, dropping to 1.5% for women 75 and over.
Since only calcium enriched alternatives were included in these stats, they don’t give us an insight into the general consumption of plant milks among older women, though chances are it’s similar to the calcium enriched pattern.
To underline the benefit of dairy consumption for older people, a University of Melbourne study arranged for consenting nursing home residents (69% women, average age almost 88) to be given 3.5 serves of dairy (milk, yoghurt, cheese) per day over two years to bring calcium and protein intakes up to the recommended levels (i.e. 1300mg of calcium and 1g of protein per kg of body weight). Mostly, they’d been getting about 1.9 serves per day.
This was done by, for example, providing dairy-based snacks and desserts instead of cake and biscuits.
It was a fracture-reduction program, and it did demonstrate better muscle maintenance and fewer falls and fractures amongst participants. One question was whether this could be done without increasing cholesterol. Answer: absolutely. It didn’t affect cholesterol (or weight). *
The study was supported by dairy organisations, so the usual question should apply as to whether there was any chance that the results wouldn’t look good for dairy products.
That said, it’s hard not to see it as a sensible intervention.
People avoid dairy for a range of reasons, but in relation to full-fat products, concern about weight and cholesterol shouldn’t be among them. In fact, there are plenty of health incentives to go that way.
If we do decide to leave them out, it’s important to at least replace the calcium and protein, which might require advice from a dietitian.
As for those dietary guidelines that have been around since the 80s, given the evidence, they’re mighty hard to justify.
*At the opposite end of the age spectrum, research from the University of Toronto has shown that children who drink whole milk are less likely to be obese, which also flies in the face of the recommendation that kids older than two stick to reduced-fat dairy.
While obesity is a problem amongst children, milk is hardly the reason. As anyone who went to school in Queensland in the 60s knows, they should just be grateful they’re not made to drink it after it’s been curdling in the sun.
Photo Source: Bigstock
