If you're weaning your baby off breast milk or formula, you may be wondering what type of cow's milk to offer. Whether you're on a weight loss plan, have a lactose sensitivity or follow a vegan diet, milk can do your body good-as long as you drink the right kind. These days, there's a dairy (or non-dairy) variety to meet every taste, dietary requirement and lifestyle-and they don't always come from a cow. My four boys all drink unsweetened soy milk.Skim and almond and soy, oh my! The days of the milkman dropping off either whole or skim milk are long gone. ‘In our household, my wife doesn’t digest dairy milk very well, so we don’t even have it around. “Now, I drink unsweetened soy milk,” he admitted. However, Gardner’s study found that lactose intolerant participants had the same symptoms with raw and pasteurized milk.Īnd what does Gardner himself drink? He said he gave up cow's milk for ethical reasons. Some raw milk producers also claim it is easier to digest. According to Gardner, this raises the always present nutrition research challenge: Was it drinking more milk or was it consuming less of something else that caused the weight loss?Īnd what about raw milk? Raw milk proponents argue that pasteurization kills off important healthy bacteria, but Gardner says that it’s difficult to prove any health benefits from these bacteria. “The Harvard study found that switching back and forth from whole fat to 2 percent to 1 percent was not associated with changes in weight,” explained Gardner.īut does drinking more milk help with weight loss? Some small, short-term studies showed that people lost weight if they drank more milk. But this was refuted by Harvard’s Nurses’ Health Study that followed the diets of over 100,000 nurses for over 30 years, including how their diets changed. The old belief was that drinking whole fat milk will make you fat and skim milk will help you lose weight. However, your milk's fat content may not affect your weight. “Whole milk has close to 50 percent of its calories as fat, and 1 percent milk has about 20 percent.” “And soy milk has the same amount of protein as dairy milk, but almond milk has much less protein.”Īnother common misunderstanding is that 2 percent milk means that 2 percent of the calories are from fat - it’s really 2 percent of the weight (which is mostly water) and 35 percent of the calories, he said. “For example, the plant-based milks generally don’t have saturated fat like cow’s milk so they don’t raise LDL-cholesterol as much as dairy milk, but they do have about the same amount of calcium,” he said. The nutrition label also allows you to compare the amount of fats, protein, carbs and vitamins in each type of milk. The lactose in milk isn’t that bad so there is no need to water it down, just avoid milks with added sugars.” Even the plain is typically sweetened, but you can get unsweetened. “The popular vanilla and chocolate versions of the plant-based milks are often loaded with added sugar. He recommended checking the nutrition panel to make sure the milk isn’t just as sugary as soda though, particularly with plant-based milks. Milk can be healthier than other options like soda. A lot of people are lactose intolerant, and you don't need it.” And in all those materials, they said that you need multiple servings of dairy every day for a healthy diet,” Gardner said. “This myth goes way back to before the food pyramid when the National Dairy Council offered to provide nutrition material to schools for free. Breast milk is incredibly important, but cow’s milk isn’t, he said. Studies have shown that drinking milk can improve your bone density, but whether it helps prevent bone fractures is debatable, he added.īut don’t young kids need milk? According to Gardner, it depends on what kind of milk. “It’s better to be physically active than drink milk as a way to strengthen your bones.” But many of those cultures do more weight-bearing activities than Americans,” he said. “There are countries like Japan and India where the population is predominantly lactose intolerant, where milk intake is low and hip fracture rates are also low. But milk, a good source of calcium, isn't necessarily the most critical factor for bone health, Gardner said. Most of us grew up believing that milk is important for children to build strong bones and for the elderly to prevent osteoporosis. He is working to clear up some of the biggest misconceptions we have about milk. To sort through the confusion, I spoke with Stanford nutrition scientist Christopher Gardner, PhD. Your local dairy, say Berkeley Farms, delivered it to your doorstep.īut now we are faced with an unfathomable array: nonfat, low-fat or whole milk? Almond, soy, rice, hemp or oat milk? From goats or cows? With or without lactase? Raw or pasteurized? Plain or flavored? There's even an ongoing controversy over which of these drinks can be called milk.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |