Study surprise: Fatty food may make you slim
COMMENTARY Ramsey Campbell Ramsey Campbell
[Published Orlando Sentinel Feb. 5, 2007]
Dairy products have seemingly come full circle in the past 50 years.
When I was a kid, dairy products — particularly whole milk and butter — were considered necessary for healthy growth.
Whole milk, cheese and butter were regular kitchen staples when I was growing up in Indiana during the 1950s.
My mother had grown up on a South Dakota farm and thought milk fat was the ultimate health food.
She insisted we all have our fill of dairy products each day.
I wasn’t so sure.
Periodically, we visited my uncle who had a small farm just outside Aberdeen in South Dakota.
One of my chores, as visiting relative, was to help out with the milking every morning. If the dead flies in the milk bucket didn’t kill my appetite, the stench of that raw milk product boiling on the kitchen stove did.
But he made his own butter, which I have to admit was tasty.
Thick slabs of rich, creamy butter on bread was a real treat at his place.
Back then, fatty dairy products were considered a good thing. Every piece of bread was slathered with real cream butter, every meal included a tall glass of whole milk, every baked potato filled with sour cream.
Milk fat ruled.
But as I got older, butter and whole milk were shunned for their high fat content.
Low fat were the new catchwords of the nation’s nutrition gurus.
Milk with limited fat content and low-fat margarine began filling grocery shelves in the 1970s. Frozen yogurt replaced ice cream.
Even sour cream was produced in a low-fat version.
Somehow butter now — even though it is 80 per cent fat — doesn’t have the same rich, cream flavor I remember, either.
Many movie theaters have switched to butter-flavored goop to put on popcorn in place of real butter.
My wife, who is Russian-born and used to butter that is almost solid milk fat, isn’t impressed by our puny 80 percent-fat spreads.
She says our butter — along with most of our other low-fat dairy products — has no taste.
Remembering how the creamy-rich, high-fat Russian butter tasted during our visits there, I’d have to agree with her.
And considering obesity is virtually unheard of in Russia, it made me wonder just how fattening whole milk products really are.
Now a new study has come along suggesting adults who favor full-fat dairy products may actually lose weight over time compared to those who consume low-fat milk products.
The research was conducted by Swedish researchers. They studied 19,000 middle-age women over nine years, and published their findings in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition recently.
Women who said they had whole milk or cheese at least once a day through the study period were less likely to gain weight compared to those who opted for lower-fat dairy products.
One theory about why whole dairy products may be linked to less weight gain is that calcium or dairy fats somehow aid in body-fat regulation.
It is not necessarily conclusive research, but it is interesting. And it offers hope to those of us who hanker for high-fat dairy foods
Now if I could only find real, high-fat butter in the grocery store, I’d gladly do some research of my own.
Ramsey Campbell can be reached at rcampbell@orlandosentinel.com or 352-742-5923.
Copyright © 2007, Orlando Sentinel
1 comment:
Actually, the Swedish study comes as no surprise to those of us who have thoroughly studied fat metabolism. The whole idea that the saturated fats found in full-fat dairy products are bad emerged from the epidemiological research of Ancel Keys carried out during the 1950s and 60s.
For whatever reason, scientists of that era used logic rather than experimentation to supposedly pinpoint the cause of clogged arteries. They reasoned that since the plaque that clogs arteries contains cholesterol and since saturated fat raises cholesterol levels, it must be saturated fat that causes heart attacks. Subsequent experimental evidence has never supported this hypothesis. Never-the-less, persistent repetition of the message and enthusiastic endorsement by virtually all major health organizations, schools of public health, and U.S. Government agencies has created the current fat-phobic mindset and an opportunity for food manufactures to make enormous profits.
This has not been good for the public health. As far back as 1977 Canadian physician and pioneer vitamin E researcher Wilfred Shute was saying, "... the harm done by those who advocate increasing the proportion of polyunsaturated fats and restricting animal fats in the diet, is incalculable...the so-called 'heart attack' first described in 1912, had increased slowly but steadily until the general acceptance of the polyunsaturated fats idea. At that time it began a precipitous increase which has continued."
If you want to learn the truth about saturated fats, it's out there. Google: "The Surprising Truth about Saturated Fats" or "Toxicity of Unsaturated Oils" or "What if its all been a big fat lie?" or "tfX: Alternatives to trans fats" or "Re: Saturated Fats and Heart Health - Share the Wealth" or "Saturated Fats A Health Hazard? I Don't Think So. - Opinion" or "Saturated fats: what dietary intake?" or "Corr: The low fat/low cholesterol diet is ineffective".
David Brown
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