Children Drinking Whole Milk Are Leaner Than Ones Drinking Skim Or Low Fat Milk

haidut

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I know Peat has mentioned a few times that people do not drink whole milk, but it appears the extra calories from whole milk are actually not the issue in weight gain, at least not in children. As I posted in my thread on the endotoxin theory of CVD, obesity is an endocrine disorder driven by inflammation. As such, simply cutting calories will probably not only fail to resolve the issue, but (as the article below says) it will lead to people seeking additional calories from starch. This starchy food may exacerbate the inflammation even more and thus contribute to obesity.
One possible reason for whole milk keeping children leaner may be the effects of various types of milk on vitamin D levels. Despite the equal amounts of vitamin D in all commercial milk brands due to standardized fortification requirements, the children on whole milk had higher vitamin D levels than ones drinking skim milk. Higher vitamin D levels are strongly protective against obesity and diabetes. Maybe the extra fat in whole milk improves the vitamin D absorption, or maybe the fat in whole milk has beneficial signalling effects of its own...A few studies have already hinted at the latter but I don't think we know the full story yet.

Relation between milk-fat percentage, vitamin D, and BMI z score in early childhood
Do we have it backward on giving kids low fat milk instead of whole? – Vesolua
"...Children who drank whole milk tended to be leaner than those who drank low fat or skim milk, a study by Toronto researchers has found. The new findings, published in Wednesday’s online issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggest a need to take a closer look at those guidelines, said study author Dr. Jonathon Maguire, a pediatrician at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. “If you don’t get fat from someplace, then you take energy from somewhere else, and it may be that children who are receiving reduced fat milk seek foods that are higher in caloric density, and maybe that’s why they’re a bit bigger,” Maguire said in an interview."

"...Another aspect of the research focused on milk fat intake and vitamin D levels. The vitamin helps strengthen our bones and may play a role in reducing the risk of chronic diseases later in life. The researchers found that roughly one cup of whole milk had the same effect on children’s vitamin D levels as three cups of 1 per cent milk. Since both vitamin D status and fat are important for a child’s growth and development, the study’s authors said the findings could have implications for maintaining health at a population level."
 

cyclops

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Do you know what the rest of their diet was like? I wonder if kids who grow up in skim milk households eat crappier food then kids in whole milk households.

But yea if kids drinking skim milk are seeking out more food because they are hungrier and that food is bad, it makes sense they will get fatter.
 
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Peat doesn't recommend whole milk. He personally drinks 1%. I don't know what he would say about kids 1-6.

Ray Peat agreeing about the fattening effect of whole milk and high fat cheeses

Other whole milk Peat quotes here.

The study was done 2745 on children from 1-6 years old. Children can burn off excess fat calories because of their extremely high metabolic rates. Children from 1-6 have different dietary needs than adults. I don't think many children read forums for nutrition advice.

it will lead to people seeking additional calories from starch. This starchy food may exacerbate the inflammation even more and thus contribute to obesity.

Nonsense.

Ray Peat on eating starch instead of sugar - there saying that it comes down to "healthy digestion.." though he personally doesn't eat much starch out of preference besides the occasionally nixtamalized corn and baby turnip, he sees how it works in the body and says that if you don't eat enough of either sugar or starch then you'll start burning your own muscle tissue for energy, and similar here said "I think it's best to get as much sugar and starch in the diet, preferably sugars..", the preferably sugars part referencing his personal preference but the statement still shows his view on keeping overall fats low including saturated and eating enough carbohydrate whether from starch or lactose/fruit.

"Starch Digestion in Infants

Infants go through some incredible nutritional transitions in the first months of life. Prior to birth, their growth and development is fueled almost entirely by glucose from mom, absorbed across the placenta. After birth, they have to abruptly transition to an exclusive milk diet, which is high in fat and lactose, still a relatively simple sugar. As they start solid foods, babies have to adapt to a much more complex and varied diet. Around the world, starch is a major source of energy in the diets of children and adults alike. But when infants are first introduced to starchy foods – often in the form of cereals and porridges – starch is a novel nutrient to their digestive tract. They need to turn it into glucose, but are they equipped to do this?

It’s true that infants have low levels of pancreatic amylase, the workhorse of starch digestion in adults. Research in the 1960’s and 1970’s showed that pancreatic amylase activity, measured in samples of fluid from the small intestine, is almost non-existent in newborns.1,2 Activity starts to increase within the first six months, however, and continues ramping up throughout childhood.1 By four to six months, when many babies are introduced to starch in the form of cereals, there is some pancreatic amylase activity, but still much less than that found in older children and adults.

Looking at these results, scientists questioned whether babies could handle starch very well. But they didn’t throw up their hands and declare, “No starch for babies!” They kept asking questions and seeking answers. They must have been puzzled by the fact that babies appeared to digest starch just fine. For example, think of the experience of those who are deficient in another carbohydrate-digesting enzyme, lactase, which allows us to digest lactose, the carbohydrate in milk. What happens if they drink a glass of milk? They have obvious, uncomfortable symptoms of diarrhea, nausea, cramping, bloating, and gas. These symptoms weren’t apparent in young babies eating infant cereals, which in the U.S. in the 1970’s, were usually introduced to babies by 1-2 months of age.3 My mother-in-law recorded my husband’s first teaspoon of doctor-recommended rice cereal in his baby book at 4 weeks, yet her careful records didn’t include any concerns about a sudden onset of diarrhea.

And this approach to infant feeding wasn’t that unique to the U.S. Ethnographic reports are filled with examples of starchy first foods4 for young infants around the world: Millet flour at 3 months in Tanzania; corn porridge at 3 months in Zimbabwe; beans and rice at 4 months in Brazil; a little butter and flour at 3 days in Bhutan; rice mash at 3 weeks in Nepal; and prechewed taro root at 2 weeks in the Solomon Islands. If babies were eating starch this young, with no apparent clinical signs of malabsorption, there must be more to the story.

The studies of pancreatic amylase activity had only measured its activity in a test tube in the lab. Next, researchers took a more holistic approach and measured starch digestion in the babies themselves. A 1975 Italian study5 added starch from different sources (potato, tapioca, corn, wheat, and rice) to 1-3-month-old babies’ formulas and then checked to see what came out at the other end –- in the babies’ poop. It turned out that very little starch ended up in these babies’ diapers. When they were given between 1 tablespoon and ½ of a cup of starch per day, they appeared to digest more than 99% of it. The researchers then tried a larger dose, giving several 1-month-olds a full cup of rice starch. Three of these infants absorbed more than 99% of this amount. Two absorbed just 96%, the other 4% ending up in their diapers, along with some diarrhea. In other words, within the first few months of life, babies can digest small amounts of starch just fine, but give them too much and you’ll see some diarrhea. (And no, I’m not suggesting that we feed 1-month-olds cereal – this was just the research at the time.)

How is this digestion of starch possible if babies have so little pancreatic amylase at work?

There are probably several mechanisms at play:

1. Babies make lots of salivary amylase. Although newborns secrete little salivary amylase, production increases quickly6 in the first few months after birth [PDF],7 reaching near adult levels by 6 months of age. Salivary amylase appears to survive8 the acidic conditions of the stomach reasonably well and is protected by both the presence of starch and breast milk.9 Once it is dumped into the small intestine, where pH is more neutral, it resumes its work of breaking down starch."

More here: Amylase in Infancy: Can Babies Digest Starch?

.
 
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Collden

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Ties in to the study showing that children who have restrictive or "healthy" eating patterns enforced by their parents are more likely to become obese. Families that drink whole milk are probably on average more relaxed both about their diet and their life in general, i.e. have lower stress levels and will stress their children less.
 

milk_lover

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Who are we kidding? Try coffee latte with skim milk and try it with full fat milk and see for yourself. Even if the coffee is strong and without sugar, full fat milk latte doesn't give me any stress response.
 

EIRE24

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Who are we kidding? Try coffee latte with skim milk and try it with full fat milk and see for yourself. Even if the coffee is strong and without sugar, full fat milk latte doesn't give me any stress response.
Possibly due to the fat helping blood sugar remain stable.
 

schultz

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My 22 month old doesn't digest skim milk as well. We've given it to him a few times when we ran out of whole milk. I think maybe it runs through too fast and the fats helps slow it down for the lil guy.
 

paymanz

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There would also be some K2 in the butterfat (assuming the cows got at least some fresh pasture).
I wish it was, but none of studies didnt reported good k level in dairy, even not longer chain of vitamin k, like mk7,mk10...... As much as i remember.
 

paymanz

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I wondering if they feed these skim milk kids a little liver or vitamin A , to optimal level ,they still be fatter than whole milk group.

Many of them dont get enough of the vitamin.
 

Wagner83

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This is a paper that was written specifically for westside (and haidut) :
Is a Calorie Really a Calorie? Metabolic Advantage of Low-Carbohydrate Diets
"
Introduction

Obesity results from an excess of energy intake over energy expenditure. If the obese individual wants to lose weight, then the solution is extremely simple: energy expenditure must exceed energy intake for a suitable length of time. Obviously, this message is simple in principle, but very difficult to put into practice. Indeed, more than half of the adult population must now be classified as overweight or obese in the USA. It has been suggested that low-fat diets promote fat loss, but Willett and Leibel concluded that fat consumption within the range of 18 to 40 percent energy appears to have little if any effect on body fatness [1]. Thus, they felt that diets high in fat do not appear to be the primary cause of obesity, and reductions in fat will not be the solution. Similarly, the recent Cochrane review concluded that fat-restricted diets are no better than calorie restricted diets in achieving long-term weight loss in overweight or obese people [2]. In fact, participants lost slightly more weight on the control diets. Thus, in reality were low-fat weight loss diets to be marketed according to the laws governing the pharmaceutical industry, they would not pass scrutiny, as they have not been shown to be more effective than control diets. Consequently, progressive scientists and health care professionals are beginning to question the wisdom of recommending the low-fat diets for weight loss. For example, Weinberg suggested that low-fat/high-carbohydrate diets may well have played an unintended role in the current epidemics of obesity, lipid abnormalities, type II diabetes and metabolic syndromes [3]. The popularity of the low-carbohydrate weight loss diets is unquestionable. This review examines the science behind the "metabolic advantage" (i.e., a greater weight loss/fat loss compared to isocaloric high-carbohydrate diet) of low-carbohydrate diets.
[...]
The Composition of Weight Loss
Although the greater weight loss has obvious significance, an equally important question is related to the composition of weight loss. In 1965, Benoit et al. published the first systematic study of the effect of a very-low-carbohydrate (ketogenic) diet on composition of weight loss [21]. They observed that when a 1,000-kcal ketogenic diet (10 g of carbohydrates/day) was fed for 10 days, their seven male subjects lost an average of 600 g/day, of which 97% was fat. Young et al. compared 3 isoenergetic (1,800 kcal/day) and isoprotein (115 g/day) diets differing in carbohydrate content (30, 60, and 104 g/day) [22]. After 9 weeks on the 30-g, 60-g, and 104-g carbohydrate diets, weight loss was 16.2, 12.8, and 11.9 kilograms and fat accounted for 95%, 84%, and 75% of the weight loss, respectively. More recently, Volek et al. examined the effects of 6-week very-low-carbohydrate diet on total and regional body composition [23]. Interestingly, their results indicated that fat mass was significantly decreased (-3.4 kg) and lean body mass significantly increased (+1.1 kg) at week 6. As expected, a very-low-carbohydrate diet led to significant decrease in serum insulin concentrations and there was a significant correlation between the decrease in insulin and the decrease in body fat, indicating that adipose tissue mobilization was up-regulated, which was also supported by the elevated beta-hydroxybutyrate concentrations. Finally, Willy et al. examined the efficacy and metabolic impact of a ketogenic diet in the treatment of morbidly obese adolescents [24]. The authors concluded that ketogenic diet is "a safe and effective weight loss regimen... The weight loss with this approach is rapid, consistent, and almost exclusively from body fat stores." It is frequently claimed that additional weight loss with low-carbohydrate diets is entirely explained by dehydration. However, the classic study by Rabast et al. demonstrated that alterations in the water and electrolyte balance observed during the low-carbohydrate diets are reversible phenomena and should thus not be regarded as causal agents of the different weight reduction [25]. Also, the modern studies that measured body composition by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry did not find any indication of excessive reduction in lean body mass [26,27]. Thus, the greater weight loss is attributable to fat loss.
"
 

dfspcc20

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I wish it was, but none of studies didnt reported good k level in dairy, even not longer chain of vitamin k, like mk7,mk10...... As much as i remember.

I think you're right.

I did find this comment, though, from Chris Masterjohn relating to butter oil; I'd imagine it applies to full fat dairy, but in lesser amounts.

"For the butter oil, its measured K2 content is meaningful but rather low, and way too low to be listed as a supplement that can give 200 ug here.

However, it is very high in unidentified quinones. It’s possible those are other forms of K2 not measured, such as tetrahydromenaquinones. But I’m not going to list it as such until that is verified. So it would be cool to see it measured."
 
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haidut

haidut

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That's what one of the study authors told me over email. The part about inflammation is mine but he said the extra calories from starch would be fattening. I know you don't agree with this, but don't shoot the messenger.
 
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lollipop

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That's what one of the study authors told me over email. The part about inflammation is mine but he said the extra calories from starch would be fattening. I know you don't agree with this, but don't shoot the messenger.
It is amazing you take the time to email the authors. Kudos to you.
 

michael94

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Im glad westside pufas is here otherwise we might be missing out on a very important perspective. Cycling periods of high and low fat high and low carb etc has always worked best for me. I have not been in good health though so that is probably a reflection of my constantly changing needs.


Hopefully when I am truly healthy I wont have to eat anything... ; )
 
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