Drinking 1% rather than 2% milk accounts for 4.5 years of less aging in adults

Pretty much sums up the state of nutrition science.

People who chose flavour over lower milk fat would probably self-describe as "living the moment", likely tend to favour short-time gratification more, and do more activities that lead to faster telomere shortening.

From just 8 days ago.

Really getting tired of these conflicting narrow food/health studies.

NYT: Whole Milk May Be Better When It Comes to Children’s Weight

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/well/whole-milk-may-be-be...

We cannot know if milk (in general or 1%) is causing aging or protecting against it, cases which point for very different conclusions.

This table also has something interesting that corroborates with this idea:

https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/tab4/

Note how the ones that rarely drink any milk have the same telomere lengths, same as the ones that drink full fat or 2% milk. SE is also so big for 1% and non-fat on the "rarely" row that telomere lengths can be considered to be the same for all the columns (on this row).

It makes me wonder if it's the milk or if there is any other covariable that is playing a role here. In fact, they themselves cite this in the study ("Discussion" section):

"However, it is possible that other dietary differences account for some of the biological aging differences among the milk fat categories."

Therefore, I'd take this study with a grain of salt. If anything can be concluded by these numbers is that 1% milk may be protective, not that full-fat milk promotes aging.

> "High-fat milk consumers may have lifestyles that are less healthy than low-fat milk drinkers. Since this possibility was recognized before the onset of the investigation, statistical adjustments were made for a dozen potential confounders. Statistical analyses determined that these variables had little influence on the milk fat and telomere relationship. Nevertheless, other variables could explain some of the relationship between milk fat intake and telomere length identified in the present investigation."

Source: https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/

https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/

>Effect modification testing indicated that the milk fat and cellular aging association may be partly due to saturated fat intake differences across the milk fat groups. When the sample was delimited to adults reporting only high total saturated fat intake (tertile 3), the milk fat and telomere relationship was strong. However, when the sample was restricted to adults reporting only low saturated fat consumption (tertile 1), there was no relationship between milk fat intake and telomere length.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families...

The literature is full of fishing expeditions for premeditated statistically significant results. People seem to choose a belief set which is intuitively appealing to them (bonus points if it can make them feel like they are morally superior) and then write and share volumes which poorly represent weak research as gospel.

This report should say the opposite, more accurate "People with shorter telomeres prefer higher fat milk". There is no evidence presented that would indicate you can influence your telomeres by choosing different milk or that milk choice is actually the culprit.

Biology-substance-effect research and especially reporting is strongly biased towards telling a good story and the motivations driving that bias strongly devalue the results.

> We’ve been brought up to think that drinking milk is good for our bones, but new research suggests that not only is this false, but the sugars in it may actually be accelerating the ageing process.

Also:

Conflicts of Interest: The author declares no conflict of interest.

The contrast between whole milk and no-fat milk is a comparatively subtle dietary shift.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, especially when they can impact millions of humans.

A smallish red flag from a scientist’s perspective is that the article was published by a publisher based out of a developing country. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but in practice it often reflects a paper that for one reason or another couldn’t get published in more well-known higher impact factor journals

Seems more to do with high saturated fat intake.

Sadly our traditional food culture of Skyr, lean grass fed sheep and plenty of fish has given way to a more Americanized fast food culture. So it wouldn't surprise me if our averages will start trending downwards in a generation or two.

Milk fat sourced from grass fed cows is actually pretty rich in healthy fats like Omega 3, CLA and Butyric acid. In fact many people who can't tolerate milk, can easily digest milk fats like butter and ghee which are devoid of the usual milk allergens (Lactose and Casein)

I might also like to see results with other kinds of fats, to know if it's something about milkfat in particular.

There was a theory a while back that the lipid size in homogenized milk might be problematic for the human digestive and circulatory system, causing them to get into places they shouldn't.

If that were true, I suppose you could explain these results by showing a link between early cardiovascular disease (CVD) and shortening of telomeres. But it looks like we have a bunch of studies showing shorter telomeres leads to CVD, not vice versa (although we've gotten cause and effect backward before so who knows at this point).

Don't drink your calories.

Could it be that people who drink 0% and 1% milk also eat fewer foods high in fat and sugar (or are more aware of their diet in other ways) compared to the average (i.e., those who do not drink milk and those who drink the most common milk available)?

The people drinking 1% typically would exercise more and watch overall diet.

Shocking.

Do people who drink a lot of 1% love longer than people who drink a little 2%? What about 3.5%?

Is this just boring p-hacking?