Whole milk compared with reduced-fat milk and childhood overweight

It's not that simple. Yes, dairy fats lend themselves to satiety but that doesn't mean all fats do. There's lots of unhealthy fats and even some healthy ones that don't lend themselves to higher satiety: take a look at the Holtz Satiety studies: http://www.mendosa.com/satiety.htm

They clearly show Croissants, cakes, Doughnuts and even Peanuts have very low satiety. Sure, eggs, cheese and beef do okay, but they're still beaten by apples, oranges, oatmeal and potatoes.

And, let's not loose sight of the fact that health is important too, and there's lots of fats out there that don't do your health good.

Very helpful—it is bizarre that people have no idea what whole fat milk is, and that it’s less than double 2% milk.

I wonder if the milk industry prefers people to gravitate towards reduced-fat milk because it leads to more milk consumption/revenue. If we all drank full-fat milk, we’d get full faster and therefore buy less.

Not only that - compare the sugar profiles of whole, 2% and skim - you may be a bit surprised (roughly equal if not the same). Also if your kids are drinking those single serve boxes... I’ve seen the sugar on those as high as 18-20g. Way higher than milk out of the carton... approaching “juice” levels. Which reminds me, those relatives with skim in their fridge? They didn’t also happen to also fall for the “heart healthy” fresh-squeezed OJ? Mine did.

Want to add a few things.

>"whole milk" is only 3.25% milkfat

It is only in Canada and US whole milk is 3.25%. In UK, and I believe EU as well it is 3.5%.

>whole milk is a miniscule increase in the total amount of milkfat consumed.

This causes my brain to explode for a bit. A 2% to 3.25% is 62.5% increase in total amount of milk fat. Which is not really minuscule increase. At the same time I totally understand what you meant.

Where are they getting 25%+ milk fat? Do people really not understand how milk is produced? Half and half is ~12%, light cream is ~20%, and whipping cream is only ~35% fat, and each of those products has reduced fat milk as a byproduct (they need to get that extra fat from somewhere). The highest fat milk I've had was raw milk, which was between 4-5% milk fat.

My aunt and I had a running joke growing up about this. Basically, she would call my whole milk "meal in a cup", so I would call her skim milk "meal in a gallon". However, the actual calorie difference is fairly modest with whole milk being less than double skim milk in calories (but IMO at least twice as satiating).

I'm really frustrated by how information about fat in general and milk specifically has been presented. I'm tired of explaining how whole milk isn't all that different from lower fat dairy milk, but it tastes way better (personal opinion). Same goes for other dairy products, like cheese and yogurt. It seems people usually overload on carbohydrates, so increasing fat consumption should help to offset that, so I think whole milk products are generally a better choice for most people. I think most people would be better off drinking ~60% less milk and going with whole milk instead of skim milk.

I wish food had some kind of satiety/calorie index or something so people can make better decisions about which products to choose.

Water would likely be considerably healthier.

If they drink gallons of whole milk they will gain weight.

What is the issue with skim milk? It tastes like milk but has less calories.

My kid's pediatrician always recommended whole milk. Personally I liked the whole milk w/o additives but would compromise on Vitamin D.

You can almost think of fat free milk as juice with protein. both lactose and fructose require the liver to metabolize to glucose. The fat free milk, has some protein to help slow down the absorbtion of the lactose, so it’ll be a slower carb than pure juice. The fat slows down the carb even more since the glycemic index of a food tends to be anti correlated with the proportion of carbs to other things (including non soluble fiber). More fat slower carb. Generally the slower the carb the slower the insulin response as well. And it’s insulin that triggers cells to ingest glucose. Which means the faster the carb the faster the blood glucose rollercoaster. And the more frequent the urge to eat, potentially leading to obesity (and increasing issues with insulin resistance).

Now having said all that I personally suspect whole milk is the way to go, but I don’t know the actual proportion. I’d expect whole milk to be correct for calfs, and if you really wanted to be correct for children, you’d look at the fat content of breast milk.

Agreed. How about this tldr:

low fat milk makes you fat

I would expect that for the Washington Post, but this is the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition; it’s target audience are not laymen.

Changing headlines is discouraged in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ("Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.")

This is a link to a scientific journal, so the context is experts in the field that are familiar with the jargon. If you look at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3063466/ it's a fairly technical term that roughly means "obesity".

Is it really such an uncommon term? I've once seen a comedian get quite a laugh with that word. Although to be fair my parents both work in the health field, so I can't claim to have an unbiased experience in this case.

Low fat milk definitely does not have added sugar. If you have to consume a fixed number of calories, though, and you consume reduced fat milk to get to that number of calories, your ratio of calories from fat, protein, and carbohydrates will skew more to protein and carbohydrates.

I don't think that's the case in the UK at least.

However the sugar level is higher per fixed volume because the removal of the fat increases the concentration of what remains.