A study in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescents followed 12,829 children aged 9 to 14.
There are several interesting points in this paper about milk…
Researchers found that those who drank skim and 1% milk gained more weight than those who drank full-fat milk.
Why? Likely it was due to the higher number of calories from sugar and lower fat in the low fat milk.
In general, it isn’t fat doesn’t make you fat, sugar and starch make you fat when taken together especially.
In part this is because fat reduces appetite whereas sugar tends to increase it. Sugar/carbohydrates also drive insulin levels higher which then increase fat storage of calories and reduce our access to our own fat.
A couple of other interesting points in the study.
The researchers found that higher Calcium intake was associated with weight gain.
Researchers also noted that milk contained estrone, an estrogen that is associated with gaining body fat. It may also cause other changes in the body because it is a hormone.
I will say that many people have a problem with consuming dairy due to lactose (milk sugar) and/or the dairy proteins which trigger the immune system to create an inflammatory response causing stomach and other problems – and in those with autoimmunity (even if in the early undiagnosed stage) dairy very well may increase autoimmune destruction of various body tissues.
So milk does not always “do a body good.”
Some people do ok with dairy while many others have problems with it and these problems might include weight gain (as discussed here), stomach problems from lactose milk sugar, or immunological problems due to reactions to the dairy proteins among other potential issues.
Like so many things in both health and nutrition, there is no one size fits all approach.
Reference: Milk fat, dietary calcium and weight gain: a longitudinal study of adolescents. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescents 2005;159(6):543-550.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/486041
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