Erin Allman-Updike

And the truth is that the more data that we have gotten to specifically look at dairy, low fat dairy versus full fat dairy, is that the data doesn't really bear out the idea that low fat dairy is truly any healthier when it comes to cardiovascular disease, cholesterol, cardiovascular mortality, those kinds of things.

So whether you're consuming low-fat milk or skim milk or whole milk, the data, like the newer data, it's true, doesn't really, like, it doesn't bear out that whole milk is truly worse than low-fat.

Okay?

Okay.

Where it does make a difference is that whole milk dairy, which is just as processed as low-fat because they take out the fat and put it back in, but...

It is going to have more calories and it is going to have more saturated fat.

And so if you're consuming that, you probably need to reduce the amounts that you're drinking in order to stay within whatever your calorie limits are going to be for the day, right?

But the new guidelines on this very first page specifically recommend consuming whole fat, full fat dairy.

They don't say, like, pick a dairy of your choice.

They specifically say you should be consuming whole fat dairy.

There's no data to support that.

Necessarily.

And again, there's no data that says that anyone needs to be consuming dairy whatsoever.

And all of the previous guidelines have erred, at least the way that they have framed it, have erred on the side of caution, saying because we know the risks of saturated fat, even though we don't have a strong indication that low-fat dairy is substantially healthier or substantially more safe a choice than whole milk, we should err on the side of caution and recommend low-fat options to people.

Okay.

It's a great question.

Our nutrition is tough, right?

It is really tough.

It's really most of them are just based on like changing a recommendation.

So in like, for example, DASH diet studies, which is like the dietary approaches to stopping hypertension or like Mediterranean diet studies where they have either allowed participants to have milk, whether they've recommended low fat milk or recommended whole milk.