Milk And Calcium For Weight Loss? Give Me A Break…
Recently, the dairy industry has been trying to convince us that dairy product and calcium can help you to lose weight.
This is advertising at its most questionable!
The May 2008 issue of Nutrition Reviews, reported how researchers looked at the results of 49 clinical trials from 1966 to 2007 which focused on whether dairy products or calcium intake affected body weight and body mass index.
“Don’t believe the hype,” Dr. Amy Joy Lanou told Reuters Health. “The ads that promote milk as helping to achieve a healthy weight are misleading; the science does not support these ads.”
Of the 49 trials, 41 showed no effects of diary or calcium on weight, two showed an increase in body weight with a dairy regimen, one showed a lower rate of weight gain and only five showed weight loss.
That’s only 5 out of 49! Of course the milk industry jumped on the band wagon with that one.
The weight loss has been reasoned as being quite likely due to an association between calcium or dairy intake and weight loss due to other factors such as an increase in exercise, cutting out high calorie foods, changing lifestyle habits and maybe even increasing fiber in the diet.
“Our findings demonstrate that increasing dairy product intake does not consistently result in weight or fat loss and may actually have the opposite effect,” Lanou and Barnard concluded.
Remember why calves drink milk? It is to grow big and strong like mom and dad in a relatively short amount of time. It has lots of calories, fats and protein which help this process along and often includes hormones injected by farmers for larger milk yields.
Don’t you think this affects those who drink it?
Our babies grow fat on milk and so will you if you continue to drink it in adulthood. But I drink “low fat milk” you say. Well, that is another whole can of worms to open up and I will in another post.
A much better substitute is water. It’s calorie free, natural and healthy, at least if you know the source. Choosing water instead of milk means you can enjoy more nutrient-dense foods such as fruits vegetables, grains, and legumes and stay within your energy needs and see the weight loss results you always wanted.
