Why Skim Milk?

[TNT]

Why do so many Peatarians drink skim milk rather than whole milk? I thought Ray Peat said saturated fat is good, so why avoid it?

 

[Rafael Lao Wai]

It's because many people here use milk for getting things like protein and calcium, which means they drink a lot of milk(2 quarts, 3 quarts, etc.). If you ingest 3 quarts of whole milk, for example, you will get around 5,7 grams of PUFA.
Milk, whole, 3.25% milkfat Nutrition Facts & Calories
Skim milk, on the other hand, has just around 0,1 grams of PUFA per quart.
Milk, nonfat, fluid, without added vitamin A (fat free or skim) Nutrition Facts & Calories
Although the saturated fat:unsaturated fat ratio will be really good, which matters, the total amount of PUFA you ingest per day matters as well. Ray advises people to try to ingest 4 grams or less of PUFA per day, and Amazoniac posted some studies corroborating this claim. Saturated fat is great and it's very good for the metabolism. But most sources of saturated fat also contain significant amounts of PUFA, so either keeping your fat intake from these sources moderate or low or using hydrogenated coconut oil or MCT oil seems to me like a good strategy to keep PUFA low and SFA high enough to satisfy the needs of the body.

 

[TeaRex14]

I drink 1% when I drink it. But I also get a lot of my calcium from leafy greens and lowfat cottage cheese. We can make saturated fats from carbohydrate, and considering a high fat diet can interfere with the oxidation of glucose, it's probably not good to consume large amounts of saturated fat either. PUFA<MUFA<SFA<starch<sugar

 

[schultz]

Whole milk is fine if you're mindful of the extra calories. If you drink a lot of it, it can be a major source of PUFA's. I guess that depends on how much PUFA you consume, but for me it would be a major source. For example, I had 2.1g of PUFA yesterday and consumed 11 cups of milk. If that milk was whole milk it would add an additional 5.2g of PUFA, not to mention 87.2g of additional fat and 784.8 additional calories. Those extra calories do not come with any extra micronutrients (just like white sugar doesn't come with any extra micronutrients). I also like to add butter to things like rice and potato, and I eat cheese as well, so I do end up consuming dairy fat along with my skim milk. Drinking whole milk as well as eating butter and cheese would be excessive, at least for me. You could just drink 11 cups of skim milk and consume 784.8 calories worth of cheese or something, and you'd have the same amount of calories as 11 cups of whole milk.

Edit: Apparently 200g of parmesan is 784 calories. From that you get 71.5g of protein, 50% RDA for zinc, 82% RDA for selenium, 21% RDA for magnesium, 2.4g of calcium, only 1.1g of PUFA, and 51.7g of fat. This seems more valuable to me than just getting 784 calories of fat from whole milk.

 

[michael94]

Skim milk has it drawbacks too at least for Americans, always has added vitamins ( unless it’s raw ). Whole you can find brands without even vitamin d added

 

[Cirion]

Two words

Randle Cycle. I've recently come to greatly appreciate not mixing fats and carbs in a single meal. This is a great way to cause inflammation and I now believe is why fatty dairy is so fattening.

I actually now think PUFA is somewhat of a false flag. Mixing fats and carbs in a single meal is a horrible idea even if the fats are SFA. Sure mixing PUFA with carbs is worse, but SFA with carbs is almost equally fattening.

RP correctly states in one of his articles that whole milk may be fattening if you use it for most of your protein. I no longer believe this is really a problem of excess calories or excess dietary fat though. I think it is a problem of excess mixing of fats and carbs in one meal.

 

[schultz]

Skim milk has it drawbacks too at least for Americans, always has added vitamins ( unless it’s raw ). Whole you can find brands without even vitamin d added

Yah, I guess it depends on what you want to limit. Ideally, I'd have a cow and I'd run that milk through a separator. I'd use the cream to make butter, cheese, ice cream, etc. I had a goat that gave birth a couple months ago, so I would have goats milk by now, but my barn caught on fire and she and her kids died, along with a ewe and her two lambs and a 6 month doe . Well, the doe didn't die, but she was badly burned so I killed her. She was a beautiful goat too. Anyway, maybe I'll rebuild and get a cow.

 

[michael94]

Yah, I guess it depends on what you want to limit. Ideally, I'd have a cow and I'd run that milk through a separator. I'd use the cream to make butter, cheese, ice cream, etc. I had a goat that gave birth a couple months ago, so I would have goats milk by now, but my barn caught on fire and she and her kids died, along with a ewe and her two lambs and a 6 month doe . Well, the doe didn't die, but she was badly burned so I killed her. She was a beautiful goat too. Anyway, maybe I'll rebuild and get a cow.

Needless to say that’s tragic...

For now I use strained skyr, which is not bad to me

 

[lampofred]

If you don't eat liver, isn't whole milk necessary for fat-soluble vitamins?

 

[Cirion]

If you don't eat liver, isn't whole milk necessary for fat-soluble vitamins?

There are other things you can do, like say cook veggies in butter or something. This is fine because it avoids RC problems (most veggies are pretty low carb, low carb w/ high fat is OK)

 

[RWilly]

Endotoxins get absorbed into the bloodstream during saturated fat absorption, causing endotoxemia ... and eventually diabetes.

Is Diabetes an Infection? A New Perspective on the Cause of Weight Gain and Type 2 Diabetes

 

[rei]

Because they drink gallons per day. If you drink sane amounts whole milk is vastly superior. There are studies of skim vs. whole and skim milk drinkers die much sooner.

 

[TNT]

@RWilly , but doesn't Ray Peat recommend saturated fats? I mean, if we avoid saturated fats and avoid PUFAs, then basically, we'd be doing a really low fat diet?

 

[RWilly]

@RWilly , but doesn't Ray Peat recommend saturated fats? I mean, if we avoid saturated fats and avoid PUFAs, then basically, we'd be doing a really low fat diet?

I think that saturated fats can be beneficial, but the endotoxin thing is a big issue. I'm still researching this myself, but I think there are certain things that can be eaten in the same meal to help with this, such as fiber. There was also a study done where orange juice in the same meal stopped the after meal endotoxin load from a McDonald's breakfast meal.

I'm also wondering if fermented foods (such as cheese) may be exempt from this.

 

[Rafael Lao Wai]

@RWilly , but doesn't Ray Peat recommend saturated fats? I mean, if we avoid saturated fats and avoid PUFAs, then basically, we'd be doing a really low fat diet?

Saturated Fatty Acids Do Not Stimulate Toll-Like Receptors

 

[DaveFoster]

Because they drink gallons per day. If you drink sane amounts whole milk is vastly superior. There are studies of skim vs. whole and skim milk drinkers die much sooner.

Some studies show inverse associations between full-fat dairy and certain non-communicable diseases, like CVD, but others show no association at all. In one of his articles, Dr. Peat points out that those who prefer skim milk already may have a predisposition toward being overweight, and they then reduce their caloric intake through their preference for low-fat dairy products. Those who believe in the causal relationship between saturated fat and cancer will substitute dairy fat with the more harmful fats. For instance, such people will consume skim milk and not use butter, but in their place, they will substitute with polyunsaturated oils and possibly trans fats, such those found in margarine.

 

[rei]

Full-Fat Dairy Food Intake is Associated with a Lower Risk of Incident Diabetes Among American Indians with Low Total Dairy Food Intake

low fat milk -> high vegetable oil -> diabetes ?

If you stick to sane amounts, like <1 liter per day, certainly use the milk with as little processing as possible. Raw milk superior, but sadly not available for the majority of people. Not homogenized whole milk is good. At this stage of processing the only negative is the flash pasteurization. The milk is not alive any more but it is mostly intact. When you start to homogenize and ripping out protein and fat you introduce all kinds of damage.

 

[Ulysses]

For me it's about minimizing intake of estrogens and growth hormone, which are fat-soluble and thus mostly in the cream

The fattiest milk I'll drink is 1%; anything above that and I can actually get perceptible brain fog from a 12 oz. glass, but I could drink a whole gallon of skim milk and feel perfectly fine

 

[RWilly]

I also wonder if the amount of homogenized molecules are an issue.

 

[Fractality]

For me it's about minimizing intake of estrogens and growth hormone, which are fat-soluble and thus mostly in the cream

The fattiest milk I'll drink is 1%; anything above that and I can actually get perceptible brain fog from a 12 oz. glass, but I could drink a whole gallon of skim milk and feel perfectly fine

I recall @Travis posting something to the effect that skim milk has less estrogen/hormones is a myth. There is also this - Drinking Skim Milk Can Contribute To Having Higher-than-desirable Estrogen Levels