The Skinny on Skim Milk: Is it the Healthy Choice?
Many people are so concerned with fat they reduce or remove it completely! This is why skim milk, 1% and 2% milk exist at the supermarket. Are they really the healthier choice?
The dairy aisle isn’t as simple as it seems. Where are the whole foods?
Skim milk is a dream for the dairy industry. It is marketed as a health food but in reality, it is a cheap, watered down version of milk, allowing the industry to retain valuable milk fat for use in other products, like cheese and ice cream.
Many health enthusiasts drink skim milk in an effort to get the perceived benefits of dairy without what they see as the downside: the fat. It might never occur to them to ask if their skim milk is a whole food and how it came to be. Let’s take a look…
Break It Down
No really, to make skim milk they take real milk and break it down. It turns out that any pasteurized milk is a processed product, and skim is just the most processed of them. Sally Fallon Morell describes this process poignantly in a long, but awesome article called “Dirty Secrets of the Food Processing Industry.” Here is an excerpt:
“Inside the plants, the milk is completely remade. As described by Emily Green in the Los Angeles Times,4 centrifuges separate the milk into fat, protein and various other solids and liquids. Once segregated, these are recombined at specific levels set for whole, lowfat and no-fat milks. Of the reconstituted milks, whole milk will most closely approximate original cow’s milk. What is left over will go into butter, cream, cheese, dried milk, and a host of other milk products. The dairy industry promotes lowfat milk and skim milk because they can make more money on the butterfat when used in ice cream. When they remove the fat to make reduced-fat milks, they replace it with powdered milk concentrate, which is formed by high temperature spray drying.”
Losing more than just Fat….
When you take something out, you’ve gotta put something back in…
After the rigorous process of breaking milk into its parts and then putting it back together, the final product is lacking. We covered in earlier posts about the loss of nutrition, but lets look at some more losses specific to skim and low fat dairy.
Michael Pollan, in his awesome book "In Defense Of Food" also describes it very well, "To make dairy products low fat, it's not enough to remove the fat. You then have to go to great lengths to preserve the body or creamy texture by working in all kinds of food additives. In the case of low-fat or skim milk, that usually means adding powdered milk. But powdered milk contains oxidized cholesterol, which scientists believe is much worse for your arteries than ordinary cholesterol..."
While regular cholesterol is necessary for coating nerves in the body and keeping things running smoothly, evidence shows that oxidized cholesterol can initiate the process of atherosclerosis, or hardening of arteries. This makes skim milk yet another example of something good turning into something else when we interfere by processing it.
Pollan goes on to say that removing the fat from the milk also makes it much harder, if not impossible, for your body to use the fat soluble vitamins in milk, the reason you probably bought it in the first place! Read more in the previous article in this series about what happens to vitamins A, D, E and K when you heat them.
Skim milk is actually harder on your body than whole because while whole milk has the fat in it trigger satiation signals to your brain, skim does not. Instead, skim milk has a higher concentration of milk sugars. It leaves you more likely to drink more because it is less filling and yet carries more calories from carbs per glass. Simple sugars alone causes spikes and crashes in our blood sugar and will leave you searching for more. For this reason, skim and low fat milk is actually associated with weight gain, not weight loss! Have you noticed if you buy skim you go through more gallons than if you buy whole? That fat is important!
Besides being less nutritious and satiating, skim and low fat milk fall short in another important category: taste. You don’t know what milk tastes like until you’ve had a tall, cold glass of real, whole milk. By comparison, skim and low fat is watery and weak. It is inferior for cooking, as it adds no richness to sauces or baking.
The dairy industry is happy to sell you a gallon of water disguised as milk, but once you know better, you’ll hold out for more.
Where can I get the real deal?
Weston A Price Foundation maintains an awesome Real Milk Finder. Simply scroll to your state to find raw milk near you!
If, like me, you call the Wasatch Front home you are in luck! Utah Natural Meat and Milk has what I think is the best tasting, highest quality raw cow AND goat milk you can get. Their commitment to cleanliness exceeds even strict state standards and they treat their animals with incredible care. The result is a bright, creamy milk that is never skimmed or altered. Filtered, chilled, bottled: that’s it! Come and get it…and tell them I sent you!
Thirsty for more?
Read other posts in my Raw Milk series!
Raw Milk vs Pasteurized: The Whole Story
7 Reasons to drink Raw Milk (and 2 Reasons NOT to)
Continue the Discussion…
Does milk fit into your personal eating plan and if so, how? Are you sensitive or even allergic to dairy? Questions like these and more can be explored with the help of a nutrition therapist…like me! I specialize in customizing diets for your needs and lifestyles to accomplish your goals. Book a free consultation today to see if I can help you use food to feel better.
