7 ms·

Drinking 1% rather than 2% milk accounts for 4.5 years of less aging in adults

49 points by lelf 7y ago

miles 7y ago
Study Suggests Milk Doesn't Strengthen Your Bones - It Ages You Instead https://www.sciencealert.com/study-suggests-milk-doesnt-strengthen-your-bones-it-ages-you-instead https://www.sciencealert.com/study-suggests-milk-doesnt-stre... > We’ve been brought up to think that drinking milk is good for our bones, but new research suggests that not only is this false, but the sugars in it may actually be accelerating the ageing process.
- sp332 7y ago
  But the difference between 1% and 2% milk is the fat content, not the sugar.
- markstos 7y ago
  The large scale China Study had negative finds on human's drinking milk intended as a baby cow growth hormone as well: "Dr. Campbell says that in multiple, peer-reviewed animal studies, researchers discovered that they could actually turn the growth of cancer cells on and off by raising and lowering doses of casein, the main protein found in cow’s milk." Ref: https://www.wellandgood.com/good-food/china-study-cheat-sheet-10-things-you-need-to-know/ https://www.wellandgood.com/good-food/china-study-cheat-shee...
  - wirrbel 7y ago
    Dr. Jason Fung often shows a graph from a study showing that Osteoporosis increased in Greece over the years, correlated to the increase in milk consumption.
tiku 7y ago
So is drinking 0% milk better than 1%?
- fs111 7y ago
  It seems that consuming fermented milk products like Joghurt or Kefir is a lot better
  - markstos 7y ago
    They would be lower lactose and a lot of humans are lactose intolerant to some degree, so there's that.
- samcal 7y ago
  Drinking no milk at all is best! Reducing dairy intake reduces Parkinson's disease rate[0], reduces hip fracture rate[1], reduces twinning offspring rate in women[2], and may even reduce Prostate Cancer[3]. You really don't miss it after a while, and the most annoying thing is modifying your restaurant orders to remove all the cheese :/ [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24894826 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24894826 [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20949604 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20949604 [2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16779988 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16779988 [3]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15203374 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15203374
  - boring_twenties 7y ago
    > modifying your restaurant orders to remove all the cheese I think I might rather have the cancer.
- boi4 7y ago
  Halving the percentage makes you live 4.5 years longer, so drinking 0% fat milk might be the key to immortality.
markstos 7y ago
This is consistent with other research that found that vegans live about 10 years longer on average. It seems no-milk is even better for longevity than low-fat milk. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/vegan-meat-life-expectancy-eggs-dairy-research-a7168036.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families...
- ahnick 7y ago
  Uh, he found the exact opposite... Quote: "Somewhat surprisingly, he also found that milk abstainers had shorter telomeres than adults who consumed low-fat milk."
- randomsearch 7y ago
  Sadly, it isn't: > Somewhat surprisingly, he also found that milk abstainers had shorter telomeres than adults who consumed low-fat milk. OTOH, I imagine this is probably bunk, as sadly was the study with the 10 years figure. (I do think that being vegetarian or vegan is probably healthier than being a meat-eater, though).
- tyingq 7y ago
  I wonder, though, how much of both of these are sort of "related group" effects. That is, the sort of people that drink 1% milk, or have a healthy diet, also have a lot of other healthy habits.
- latortuga 7y ago
  The study is not causal, you can't say that no-milk is good for longevity, just that it's associated with it. Switching to no milk or low fat milk won't necessarily help you live longer because it could just as easily be other dietary choices. These kinds of studies are worse than doing nothing because they lead people to believe that one small change could be the difference in your length of life when all they do is observe correlations. Hell, the guy even said he could easily argue for any conclusion about dairy that was asked of him!
- chrisco255 7y ago
  India has the highest percentage of vegetarians of any country (at 38% of the population), yet they rank 128th out of 185 countries in life expectancy. Meanwhile, you look at the top 10 countries for life expectancy, and there's plenty of meat in the diet, including Hong Kong, who eat more fish and beef than Americans do, and Iceland, who consume at least 200 pounds of fish a year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...
Y_Y 7y ago
I knew my grandma who spent her life drinking 4% whole milk should have lived another twenty years!
- deleted 7y ago
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- deleted 7y ago
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malvosenior 7y ago
I don't know enough about chemistry to say, but does steaming milk (like for a latte) have any effect on its health properties? I ask because for milk based coffee drinks you really want to be using whole milk. There are no taste and texture options that get anywhere near it.
- prostheticvamp 7y ago
  Yes. Steaming milk degrades lactose into glucose and galactose, and coagulates some of the proteins.
  - colechristensen 7y ago
    Those aren't health properties, they both happen in your stomach regardless.
    - tlbsofware 7y ago
      Unless you are deficient in your production of the enzyme lactase (lactose intolerant)
  - stu_k 7y ago
    Do you know what effect those changes have in the body?
whb07 7y ago
I'm gonna go on a limb without looking at this study and propose the following connection: The people drinking 1% typically would exercise more and watch overall diet. Shocking.
- deleted 7y ago
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- Hello71 7y ago
  > There were a dozen covariates controlled in the present study (age, gender, race, household size, smoking, body mass index, MET-minutes of total physical activity, alcohol use, grams of protein consumed per kilogram of body weight, percentage of energy derived from dietary fat, grams of dietary fiber consumed per 1000 kilocalories, and percentage of total energy derived from saturated fat.
  - andreilys 7y ago
    There are of course other confounding variables that this study likely does not take into account (whether because they can’t measure it, or they chose not to include it)
  - dtwest 7y ago
    How would one handle that many factors? I am very curious what the techniques for doing so would be. I'm no expert but my initial reaction would be that you need more than 5834 adults in a study that controls for all of those factors. We don't really know how household size, for example, would affect the results, so wouldn't you need a bunch of test data to analyze all of the combinations? Or did they only study people who are the same in most of them? (i.e. 45, male, with a household size of 4, nonsmoking, etc...) Would love to hear from someone more informed on this than myself.
    - iron0013 7y ago
      It depends on the effect sizes, but in most contexts 5k participants is considered a very sufficient sample. You don’t need millions of participants to study things like this.
jimmar 7y ago
> "If someone asked me to put together a presentation on the value of drinking milk, I could put together a 1-hour presentation that would knock your socks off. You'd think, 'Whoa, everybody should be drinking more milk.' If someone said do the opposite, I could also do that. Pretty much sums up the state of nutrition science.
- mberning 7y ago
  Yep. And this story is some “John Tesh Radio Show” tier fluff.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
    I wonder if the scientist in question doesn't know of the possibility of confounders, didn't mention them to the reporter, or the reporter just didn't think that was exciting enough to include in the article. It seems just possible that there is something about 1% fat milk drinkers that is different from 2% fat milk drinkers, which causes them to drink 1% fat milk and which also causes them to have longer telomeres. Unfortunately, there is no link to the study, so we can't see what was controlled for. But if I were a betting man I'd bet that most of the difference is caused by other causes than the difference in milk drinking.
    - mberning 7y ago
      What's worse is when the article touts all of the variables that have been controlled for as if the issue has been completely ameliorated.
    - coffeecat 7y ago
      I think this is correct. The non-milk-drinkers had telomere lengths between those of the reduced-fat and the full-fat groups, which leads me to conclude that among milk-drinkers, those who go for the reduced-fat milk tend to live a healthier overall lifestyle. Those who go for the full-fat milk tend to live a less healthy lifestyle. The non-milk-drinker category is a mixed bag, since the preferred-fat-percent variable is lost.
  - 7y ago
turk73 7y ago
What is "Bullshit correlation" Alex? Seriously, there are probably so many lurking variables in that study... As far as vegans go, same thing. You know the #1 thing that probably extends your life? Not drinking alcohol. So if vegans are also teetotalers, or just into fitness, there you go. Nothing at all to do with milk.
scythe 7y ago
The study: https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/ https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/ >Effect modification testing indicated that the milk fat and cellular aging association may be partly due to saturated fat intake differences across the milk fat groups. When the sample was delimited to adults reporting only high total saturated fat intake (tertile 3), the milk fat and telomere relationship was strong. However, when the sample was restricted to adults reporting only low saturated fat consumption (tertile 1), there was no relationship between milk fat intake and telomere length.
- rhacker 7y ago
  Wow, if the creator of this website is reading - please stop with the crazy locked headers and auto-adjusting panels on the top and bottom.
Raphmedia 7y ago
Does this study take into account other variables? The article also says that people who do not drink milk have shorter telomeres. Could it be that people who drink 0% and 1% milk also eat fewer foods high in fat and sugar (or are more aware of their diet in other ways) compared to the average (i.e., those who do not drink milk and those who drink the most common milk available)?
- iron0013 7y ago
  The paper is open access, fortunately, so you can go view the list of covariates that were included in the model at the link
chrisbigelow 7y ago
> "there was no relationship between milk fat and telomere length when total saturated fat intake was low, but the association was strong when total saturated fat intake was high." Seems more to do with high saturated fat intake.
sergiotapia 7y ago
I cut out dairy entirely. I drink almond milk only. Don't drink soy, it'll give you mantits.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  Googling "does soy give you man tits" says otherwise.
  - sergiotapia 7y ago
    Yes follow those S T U D I E S and not the hundreds of thousands of other links.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
_bxg1 7y ago
I wonder if anyone's studied the effect that keeping up with nutrition studies has on lifespan.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  There's a study I want to see. Mortality rate broken down by cause compared to health enthusiasm rated by sect. Or even simpler, compared to book ownership. Pick a few hundred of the most popular health books and track a population of owners and their cause of death or significant health events.
- coldcode 7y ago
  If you add up all the years of lifespan you lose from reports like these you would already be long dead.
mataug 7y ago
Classic example of Co-relation doesn't equal Causation
sfotm 7y ago
When it comes to studies that involve measuring telomeres as a result, I've always wondered: is telomere length such a foolproof measure that it can be used to make claims like this? Given two people who will live their entire natural lifespan and have no complications, will the one with shorter telomeres necessarily die first? Are there tolerances of some kind?
acd10j 7y ago
I hate food science, Just few weeks back had switched from 1% milk to full fat milk by reading one another article which states opposite. That sugar lobby has demonised fat and actually consuming non skimmed milk reduces craving. So you do less beinge eating. Now this is opposite!!
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  Now look up dairy lobbying. I'd wean off cows' milk entirely if you don't like to be manipulated.
- hinkley 7y ago
  The more food science research I hear about the more accurate this line gets for me: "The moment you're born, you start dying." Everything is killing me. Some things a bit faster than others.
shadykiller 7y ago
This is a useless research and doesn't prove anything. Milk fat sourced from grass fed cows is actually pretty rich in healthy fats like Omega 3, CLA and Butyric acid. In fact many people who can't tolerate milk, can easily digest milk fats like butter and ghee which are devoid of the usual milk allergens (Lactose and Casein)
kleer001 7y ago
Link if anyone wants to read the actual paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336877579_Milk_Fat_Intake_and_Telomere_Length_in_US_Women_and_Men_The_Role_of_the_Milk_Fat_Fraction https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336877579_Milk_Fat_... Also: Conflicts of Interest: The author declares no conﬂict of interest.
tedd4u 7y ago
But, "Kids who drank whole milk were at a 39 percent reduced risk for being overweight than those who drank low-fat milk"? From just 8 days ago. Really getting tired of these conflicting narrow food/health studies. NYT: Whole Milk May Be Better When It Comes to Children’s Weight https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/well/whole-milk-may-be-better-when-it-comes-to-childrens-weight.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/well/whole-milk-may-be-be...
- sp332 7y ago
  The article specifically says "in adults", so it's not conflicting.
  - tedd4u 7y ago
    True, and my frustration probably shows. I shouldn't rant. Maybe the finding is drink whole milk until 18 to lower risk of obesity then switch to 1% to slow effects of aging. What I'd like to see is a reliable source that synthesizes recent, reproducible research into cogent diet recommendations. Anyone aware of such a source? In the meantime, I'd prefer not to be pestered by narrow tree-instead-of-the-forest articles that seem to be published every week with hyperspecific diet research. Up to me to ignore them I guess instead of ranting. Still I thought this was an especially poignant example of research popularized just a few weeks apart that could understandably leave many people wondering what action to take or reducing confidence in diet research in general.
    - CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
      NNR 2012 is pretty good https://www.norden.org/en/publication/nordic-nutrition-recommendations-2012 https://www.norden.org/en/publication/nordic-nutrition-recom...
- ScottFree 7y ago
  I always wait until a particular study has been reproduced at least once before I take it seriously.
- 7y ago
colechristensen 7y ago
I am at the point where I don't believe any food or drug research and reporting has practical value outside cases where a linear relation between substance and effect is established and at a high enough dose the effect kills you. The literature is full of fishing expeditions for premeditated statistically significant results. People seem to choose a belief set which is intuitively appealing to them (bonus points if it can make them feel like they are morally superior) and then write and share volumes which poorly represent weak research as gospel. This report should say the opposite, more accurate "People with shorter telomeres prefer higher fat milk". There is no evidence presented that would indicate you can influence your telomeres by choosing different milk or that milk choice is actually the culprit. Biology-substance-effect research and especially reporting is strongly biased towards telling a good story and the motivations driving that bias strongly devalue the results.
throw0101a 7y ago
1%? Why bother going half way: just switch to water.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
iron0013 7y ago
I hope people will follow the link to the actual research before commenting, because it addresses almost all of the objections that I’m seeing pop up repeatedly here: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/ https://www.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/ A smallish red flag from a scientist’s perspective is that the article was published by a publisher based out of a developing country. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but in practice it often reflects a paper that for one reason or another couldn’t get published in more well-known higher impact factor journals
davestephens 7y ago
Using 1% milk means you need twice as much for a decent cup of tea. It's a false economy.
hinkley 7y ago
I kinda wish they'd speculated on a cause and effect chain here, but then we'd have a different group of readers upset. I might also like to see results with other kinds of fats, to know if it's something about milkfat in particular. There was a theory a while back that the lipid size in homogenized milk might be problematic for the human digestive and circulatory system, causing them to get into places they shouldn't. If that were true, I suppose you could explain these results by showing a link between early cardiovascular disease (CVD) and shortening of telomeres. But it looks like we have a bunch of studies showing shorter telomeres leads to CVD, not vice versa (although we've gotten cause and effect backward before so who knows at this point).
mattmar96 7y ago
My immediate thought is, those who grab the 1% milk at the grocery store are more likely to make other healthy decisions as well. Can anyone comment on whether the study adjusted for this?
- jelliclesfarm 7y ago
  I had the same thought. What other foods have an effect on telemores length? [..] Telomere length is positively associated with the consumption of legumes, nuts, seaweed, fruits, and 100% fruit juice, dairy products, and coffee, whereas it is inversely associated with consumption of alcohol, red meat, or processed meat.[..] And https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463808/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463808/ And https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3241941/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3241941/
- fermenflo 7y ago
  My immediate reaction as well. Seems like the perfect case of confounding. But after reading the paper, I saw this statement: > "High-fat milk consumers may have lifestyles that are less healthy than low-fat milk drinkers. Since this possibility was recognized before the onset of the investigation, statistical adjustments were made for a dozen potential confounders. Statistical analyses determined that these variables had little influence on the milk fat and telomere relationship. Nevertheless, other variables could explain some of the relationship between milk fat intake and telomere length identified in the present investigation." They didn't go into great detail as to what those confounders were, but it looks like they took that into account and isolated milk-fat percentage as well as they could. Source: https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/ https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/
  - eej71 7y ago
    It sounds like one must still assume they correctly accounted for all confounders.
    - fermenflo 7y ago
purerandomness 7y ago
Alternative hypothesis: People who choose to trade flavour for lower milk fat tend to also be more risk-aware, prefer a healthier lifestyle (don't smoke, work out) which contribute to slower telomere shortening. People who chose flavour over lower milk fat would probably self-describe as "living the moment", likely tend to favour short-time gratification more, and do more activities that lead to faster telomere shortening.
- ChuckNorris89 7y ago
  My thoughts exactly. Does that 1% of extra fat really have such a negative effect o your body?
  - clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
    I drink milk almost daily. Over a lifetime it might.
- idclip 7y ago
  You win! I also think it should say “correlates with” rather than account for.
- ar_lan 7y ago
  Obviously this is an anecdote, but what's ironic is that in my life, the "generally healthier" people all opt for either whole-milk or alternative kinds of milk (almond, oat, etc.), whereas the overweight people I know almost always opt for skim milk. I am a pretty active person and health-conscious, and in my group, we all typically agree that we aren't fond of the substitutes made in skim milk.
  - onetimemanytime 7y ago
    I have observed the same thing. Drink skim milk, diet soda and then ear ice creams, burgers and fries. It's to lie to themselves, I think.
    - 7y ago
GoToRO 7y ago
What is the default fat percentage for the milk of a traditional cow?
- dundercoder 7y ago
  3.25% [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_content_of_milk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_content_of_milk
gowld 7y ago
Do people who drink 1% milk eat low fat pizza and yogurt? Do people who drink a lot of 1% love longer than people who drink a little 2%? What about 3.5%? Is this just boring p-hacking?
fermenflo 7y ago
I know everyone's reaction (mine included) was: "No shit, people who drink low-fat milk probably live healthier lives in general"... But it looks like they really did account for other variables and found that milk-fat percentage was the only strong factor in play: > "High-fat milk consumers may have lifestyles that are less healthy than low-fat milk drinkers. Since this possibility was recognized before the onset of the investigation, statistical adjustments were made for a dozen potential confounders. Statistical analyses determined that these variables had little influence on the milk fat and telomere relationship. Nevertheless, other variables could explain some of the relationship between milk fat intake and telomere length identified in the present investigation." Source: https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/ https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/
- jelliclesfarm 7y ago
  I am inclined to think genetic signature matters. Is the lengthening of telemores a genetic thing? I am not sure if that’s even a right question to ask.
- rwallace 7y ago
  Okay, but let's stop and think about it for ten seconds: Of course drinking a slightly different brand of milk doesn't make you live 4.5 years longer; the headline claim is obvious nonsense. (And as I understand it, it's now thought that to the extent there is any difference, it's in favor of the high-fat milk.) So then the conclusion seems to be that confounding factors have an extremely strong effect on the conclusion, even when the investigators have tried hard to screen them out. Why? What went wrong with the attempts to screen out the confounding factors?
  - fermenflo 7y ago
    To be fair, it's a pretty large claim to just assume that something "went wrong with the attempts to screen out the confounding factors" and that the conclusion must be false. It's a shocking conclusion, I'll give you that. And to be honest, I'm not convinced either. You might very well be right. But it's a strong claim to make agains a peer-reviewed journal publication.
AceyMan 7y ago
Serious question: is 1% milkfat known to be "more healthy" than 2%? The body needs fats, and the USA (most of all) is still recovering from an unhealthy fear of fats instilled by the megacorps the past ~30 years. [me: grew up drinking 2% until I was fully grown / 18yrs]
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
  It's become more complicated: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/are-fats-so-bad https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/are-fats-so-b...
dannykwells 7y ago
Without a biological mechanism this is just a correlation, no matter how much statistical correction they claimed to do.
jwatte 7y ago
:doubt:
jobseeker990 7y ago
I'm skeptical. I've seen other studies where whole milk has a whole host of health benefits.
robwwilliams 7y ago
Not probable and highly likely to be confounded by secular and social cofactors. These dietary models and recommendations in humans are dumb “one size fits all”. We know from extensive animal research that genome-by-environmental effects are pervasive and can be large. For example in a highly diverse family of mice, a very high fat diet—60% calories from lard—is advantageous in terms of longevity in a few family members; although also true that this extreme diet is generally deleterious (see bioRxiv paper by Suheeta Roy and colleagues, GXE BXD study, 2019). The contrast between whole milk and no-fat milk is a comparatively subtle dietary shift. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, especially when they can impact millions of humans.
- elsewhen 7y ago
  the researchers took steps to mitigate the potential effects of confounding variables. here is a link to the full study: https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/ https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/
minikites 7y ago
Better yet, don't drink milk at all, it's unhealthy in the same ways as soda and fruit juice (milk does have a lot of sugar which I don't think a lot of people think about). Don't drink your calories.
MrDresden 7y ago
Consumption of a near 0% fat cheese called Skyr has historically been high since the 11th century in Iceland. I do wonder if that may have had a role to play in our high average age expectancy. Sadly our traditional food culture of Skyr, lean grass fed sheep and plenty of fish has given way to a more Americanized fast food culture. So it wouldn't surprise me if our averages will start trending downwards in a generation or two.
justboxing 7y ago
Drinking NO MILK accounts for 8 years of less aging and reduced cases of Osteoporosis in adults.
ameixaseca 7y ago
Just opened the study and read a bit about the methods and I wonder why they didn't include people that do not drink milk so the telomere lengths could be compared. We cannot know if milk (in general or 1%) is causing aging or protecting against it, cases which point for very different conclusions. This table also has something interesting that corroborates with this idea: https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/tab4/ https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/tab4/ Note how the ones that rarely drink any milk have the same telomere lengths, same as the ones that drink full fat or 2% milk. SE is also so big for 1% and non-fat on the "rarely" row that telomere lengths can be considered to be the same for all the columns (on this row). It makes me wonder if it's the milk or if there is any other covariable that is playing a role here. In fact, they themselves cite this in the study ("Discussion" section): "However, it is possible that other dietary differences account for some of the biological aging differences among the milk fat categories." Therefore, I'd take this study with a grain of salt. If anything can be concluded by these numbers is that 1% milk may be protective, not that full-fat milk promotes aging.

49 points by lelf 7y ago

Study Suggests Milk Doesn't Strengthen Your Bones - It Ages You Instead https://www.sciencealert.com/study-suggests-milk-doesnt-strengthen-your-bones-it-ages-you-instead https://www.sciencealert.com/study-suggests-milk-doesnt-stre... > We’ve been brought up to think that drinking milk is good for our bones, but new research suggests that not only is this false, but the sugars in it may actually be accelerating the ageing process.

sp332 7y ago
But the difference between 1% and 2% milk is the fat content, not the sugar.
markstos 7y ago
The large scale China Study had negative finds on human's drinking milk intended as a baby cow growth hormone as well: "Dr. Campbell says that in multiple, peer-reviewed animal studies, researchers discovered that they could actually turn the growth of cancer cells on and off by raising and lowering doses of casein, the main protein found in cow’s milk." Ref: https://www.wellandgood.com/good-food/china-study-cheat-sheet-10-things-you-need-to-know/ https://www.wellandgood.com/good-food/china-study-cheat-shee...
- wirrbel 7y ago
  Dr. Jason Fung often shows a graph from a study showing that Osteoporosis increased in Greece over the years, correlated to the increase in milk consumption.

tiku 7y ago

So is drinking 0% milk better than 1%?

fs111 7y ago
It seems that consuming fermented milk products like Joghurt or Kefir is a lot better
- markstos 7y ago
  They would be lower lactose and a lot of humans are lactose intolerant to some degree, so there's that.
samcal 7y ago
Drinking no milk at all is best! Reducing dairy intake reduces Parkinson's disease rate[0], reduces hip fracture rate[1], reduces twinning offspring rate in women[2], and may even reduce Prostate Cancer[3]. You really don't miss it after a while, and the most annoying thing is modifying your restaurant orders to remove all the cheese :/ [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24894826 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24894826 [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20949604 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20949604 [2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16779988 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16779988 [3]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15203374 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15203374
- boring_twenties 7y ago
  > modifying your restaurant orders to remove all the cheese I think I might rather have the cancer.
boi4 7y ago
Halving the percentage makes you live 4.5 years longer, so drinking 0% fat milk might be the key to immortality.

markstos 7y ago

This is consistent with other research that found that vegans live about 10 years longer on average. It seems no-milk is even better for longevity than low-fat milk. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/vegan-meat-life-expectancy-eggs-dairy-research-a7168036.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families...

ahnick 7y ago
Uh, he found the exact opposite... Quote: "Somewhat surprisingly, he also found that milk abstainers had shorter telomeres than adults who consumed low-fat milk."
randomsearch 7y ago
Sadly, it isn't: > Somewhat surprisingly, he also found that milk abstainers had shorter telomeres than adults who consumed low-fat milk. OTOH, I imagine this is probably bunk, as sadly was the study with the 10 years figure. (I do think that being vegetarian or vegan is probably healthier than being a meat-eater, though).
tyingq 7y ago
I wonder, though, how much of both of these are sort of "related group" effects. That is, the sort of people that drink 1% milk, or have a healthy diet, also have a lot of other healthy habits.
latortuga 7y ago
The study is not causal, you can't say that no-milk is good for longevity, just that it's associated with it. Switching to no milk or low fat milk won't necessarily help you live longer because it could just as easily be other dietary choices. These kinds of studies are worse than doing nothing because they lead people to believe that one small change could be the difference in your length of life when all they do is observe correlations. Hell, the guy even said he could easily argue for any conclusion about dairy that was asked of him!
chrisco255 7y ago
India has the highest percentage of vegetarians of any country (at 38% of the population), yet they rank 128th out of 185 countries in life expectancy. Meanwhile, you look at the top 10 countries for life expectancy, and there's plenty of meat in the diet, including Hong Kong, who eat more fish and beef than Americans do, and Iceland, who consume at least 200 pounds of fish a year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...

Y_Y 7y ago

I knew my grandma who spent her life drinking 4% whole milk should have lived another twenty years!

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malvosenior 7y ago

I don't know enough about chemistry to say, but does steaming milk (like for a latte) have any effect on its health properties? I ask because for milk based coffee drinks you really want to be using whole milk. There are no taste and texture options that get anywhere near it.

prostheticvamp 7y ago
Yes. Steaming milk degrades lactose into glucose and galactose, and coagulates some of the proteins.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  Those aren't health properties, they both happen in your stomach regardless.
  - tlbsofware 7y ago
    Unless you are deficient in your production of the enzyme lactase (lactose intolerant)
- stu_k 7y ago
  Do you know what effect those changes have in the body?

whb07 7y ago

I'm gonna go on a limb without looking at this study and propose the following connection: The people drinking 1% typically would exercise more and watch overall diet. Shocking.

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Hello71 7y ago
> There were a dozen covariates controlled in the present study (age, gender, race, household size, smoking, body mass index, MET-minutes of total physical activity, alcohol use, grams of protein consumed per kilogram of body weight, percentage of energy derived from dietary fat, grams of dietary fiber consumed per 1000 kilocalories, and percentage of total energy derived from saturated fat.
- andreilys 7y ago
  There are of course other confounding variables that this study likely does not take into account (whether because they can’t measure it, or they chose not to include it)
- dtwest 7y ago
  How would one handle that many factors? I am very curious what the techniques for doing so would be. I'm no expert but my initial reaction would be that you need more than 5834 adults in a study that controls for all of those factors. We don't really know how household size, for example, would affect the results, so wouldn't you need a bunch of test data to analyze all of the combinations? Or did they only study people who are the same in most of them? (i.e. 45, male, with a household size of 4, nonsmoking, etc...) Would love to hear from someone more informed on this than myself.
  - iron0013 7y ago
    It depends on the effect sizes, but in most contexts 5k participants is considered a very sufficient sample. You don’t need millions of participants to study things like this.

jimmar 7y ago

> "If someone asked me to put together a presentation on the value of drinking milk, I could put together a 1-hour presentation that would knock your socks off. You'd think, 'Whoa, everybody should be drinking more milk.' If someone said do the opposite, I could also do that. Pretty much sums up the state of nutrition science.

mberning 7y ago
Yep. And this story is some “John Tesh Radio Show” tier fluff.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  I wonder if the scientist in question doesn't know of the possibility of confounders, didn't mention them to the reporter, or the reporter just didn't think that was exciting enough to include in the article. It seems just possible that there is something about 1% fat milk drinkers that is different from 2% fat milk drinkers, which causes them to drink 1% fat milk and which also causes them to have longer telomeres. Unfortunately, there is no link to the study, so we can't see what was controlled for. But if I were a betting man I'd bet that most of the difference is caused by other causes than the difference in milk drinking.
  - mberning 7y ago
    What's worse is when the article touts all of the variables that have been controlled for as if the issue has been completely ameliorated.
  - coffeecat 7y ago
    I think this is correct. The non-milk-drinkers had telomere lengths between those of the reduced-fat and the full-fat groups, which leads me to conclude that among milk-drinkers, those who go for the reduced-fat milk tend to live a healthier overall lifestyle. Those who go for the full-fat milk tend to live a less healthy lifestyle. The non-milk-drinker category is a mixed bag, since the preferred-fat-percent variable is lost.
- 7y ago

turk73 7y ago

What is "Bullshit correlation" Alex? Seriously, there are probably so many lurking variables in that study... As far as vegans go, same thing. You know the #1 thing that probably extends your life? Not drinking alcohol. So if vegans are also teetotalers, or just into fitness, there you go. Nothing at all to do with milk.

scythe 7y ago

The study: https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/ https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/ >Effect modification testing indicated that the milk fat and cellular aging association may be partly due to saturated fat intake differences across the milk fat groups. When the sample was delimited to adults reporting only high total saturated fat intake (tertile 3), the milk fat and telomere relationship was strong. However, when the sample was restricted to adults reporting only low saturated fat consumption (tertile 1), there was no relationship between milk fat intake and telomere length.

rhacker 7y ago
Wow, if the creator of this website is reading - please stop with the crazy locked headers and auto-adjusting panels on the top and bottom.

Raphmedia 7y ago

Does this study take into account other variables? The article also says that people who do not drink milk have shorter telomeres. Could it be that people who drink 0% and 1% milk also eat fewer foods high in fat and sugar (or are more aware of their diet in other ways) compared to the average (i.e., those who do not drink milk and those who drink the most common milk available)?

iron0013 7y ago
The paper is open access, fortunately, so you can go view the list of covariates that were included in the model at the link

chrisbigelow 7y ago

> "there was no relationship between milk fat and telomere length when total saturated fat intake was low, but the association was strong when total saturated fat intake was high." Seems more to do with high saturated fat intake.

sergiotapia 7y ago

I cut out dairy entirely. I drink almond milk only. Don't drink soy, it'll give you mantits.

hombre_fatal 7y ago
Googling "does soy give you man tits" says otherwise.
- sergiotapia 7y ago
  Yes follow those S T U D I E S and not the hundreds of thousands of other links.
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_bxg1 7y ago

I wonder if anyone's studied the effect that keeping up with nutrition studies has on lifespan.

colechristensen 7y ago
There's a study I want to see. Mortality rate broken down by cause compared to health enthusiasm rated by sect. Or even simpler, compared to book ownership. Pick a few hundred of the most popular health books and track a population of owners and their cause of death or significant health events.
coldcode 7y ago
If you add up all the years of lifespan you lose from reports like these you would already be long dead.

mataug 7y ago

Classic example of Co-relation doesn't equal Causation

sfotm 7y ago

When it comes to studies that involve measuring telomeres as a result, I've always wondered: is telomere length such a foolproof measure that it can be used to make claims like this? Given two people who will live their entire natural lifespan and have no complications, will the one with shorter telomeres necessarily die first? Are there tolerances of some kind?

acd10j 7y ago

I hate food science, Just few weeks back had switched from 1% milk to full fat milk by reading one another article which states opposite. That sugar lobby has demonised fat and actually consuming non skimmed milk reduces craving. So you do less beinge eating. Now this is opposite!!

hombre_fatal 7y ago
Now look up dairy lobbying. I'd wean off cows' milk entirely if you don't like to be manipulated.
hinkley 7y ago
The more food science research I hear about the more accurate this line gets for me: "The moment you're born, you start dying." Everything is killing me. Some things a bit faster than others.

shadykiller 7y ago

This is a useless research and doesn't prove anything. Milk fat sourced from grass fed cows is actually pretty rich in healthy fats like Omega 3, CLA and Butyric acid. In fact many people who can't tolerate milk, can easily digest milk fats like butter and ghee which are devoid of the usual milk allergens (Lactose and Casein)

kleer001 7y ago

Link if anyone wants to read the actual paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336877579_Milk_Fat_Intake_and_Telomere_Length_in_US_Women_and_Men_The_Role_of_the_Milk_Fat_Fraction https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336877579_Milk_Fat_... Also: Conflicts of Interest: The author declares no conﬂict of interest.

tedd4u 7y ago

But, "Kids who drank whole milk were at a 39 percent reduced risk for being overweight than those who drank low-fat milk"? From just 8 days ago. Really getting tired of these conflicting narrow food/health studies. NYT: Whole Milk May Be Better When It Comes to Children’s Weight https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/well/whole-milk-may-be-better-when-it-comes-to-childrens-weight.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/well/whole-milk-may-be-be...

sp332 7y ago
The article specifically says "in adults", so it's not conflicting.
- tedd4u 7y ago
  True, and my frustration probably shows. I shouldn't rant. Maybe the finding is drink whole milk until 18 to lower risk of obesity then switch to 1% to slow effects of aging. What I'd like to see is a reliable source that synthesizes recent, reproducible research into cogent diet recommendations. Anyone aware of such a source? In the meantime, I'd prefer not to be pestered by narrow tree-instead-of-the-forest articles that seem to be published every week with hyperspecific diet research. Up to me to ignore them I guess instead of ranting. Still I thought this was an especially poignant example of research popularized just a few weeks apart that could understandably leave many people wondering what action to take or reducing confidence in diet research in general.
  - CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
    NNR 2012 is pretty good https://www.norden.org/en/publication/nordic-nutrition-recommendations-2012 https://www.norden.org/en/publication/nordic-nutrition-recom...
ScottFree 7y ago
I always wait until a particular study has been reproduced at least once before I take it seriously.
7y ago

colechristensen 7y ago

I am at the point where I don't believe any food or drug research and reporting has practical value outside cases where a linear relation between substance and effect is established and at a high enough dose the effect kills you. The literature is full of fishing expeditions for premeditated statistically significant results. People seem to choose a belief set which is intuitively appealing to them (bonus points if it can make them feel like they are morally superior) and then write and share volumes which poorly represent weak research as gospel. This report should say the opposite, more accurate "People with shorter telomeres prefer higher fat milk". There is no evidence presented that would indicate you can influence your telomeres by choosing different milk or that milk choice is actually the culprit. Biology-substance-effect research and especially reporting is strongly biased towards telling a good story and the motivations driving that bias strongly devalue the results.

throw0101a 7y ago

1%? Why bother going half way: just switch to water.

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iron0013 7y ago

I hope people will follow the link to the actual research before commenting, because it addresses almost all of the objections that I’m seeing pop up repeatedly here: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/ https://www.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/ A smallish red flag from a scientist’s perspective is that the article was published by a publisher based out of a developing country. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but in practice it often reflects a paper that for one reason or another couldn’t get published in more well-known higher impact factor journals

davestephens 7y ago

Using 1% milk means you need twice as much for a decent cup of tea. It's a false economy.

hinkley 7y ago

I kinda wish they'd speculated on a cause and effect chain here, but then we'd have a different group of readers upset. I might also like to see results with other kinds of fats, to know if it's something about milkfat in particular. There was a theory a while back that the lipid size in homogenized milk might be problematic for the human digestive and circulatory system, causing them to get into places they shouldn't. If that were true, I suppose you could explain these results by showing a link between early cardiovascular disease (CVD) and shortening of telomeres. But it looks like we have a bunch of studies showing shorter telomeres leads to CVD, not vice versa (although we've gotten cause and effect backward before so who knows at this point).

mattmar96 7y ago

My immediate thought is, those who grab the 1% milk at the grocery store are more likely to make other healthy decisions as well. Can anyone comment on whether the study adjusted for this?

jelliclesfarm 7y ago
I had the same thought. What other foods have an effect on telemores length? [..] Telomere length is positively associated with the consumption of legumes, nuts, seaweed, fruits, and 100% fruit juice, dairy products, and coffee, whereas it is inversely associated with consumption of alcohol, red meat, or processed meat.[..] And https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463808/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463808/ And https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3241941/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3241941/
fermenflo 7y ago
My immediate reaction as well. Seems like the perfect case of confounding. But after reading the paper, I saw this statement: > "High-fat milk consumers may have lifestyles that are less healthy than low-fat milk drinkers. Since this possibility was recognized before the onset of the investigation, statistical adjustments were made for a dozen potential confounders. Statistical analyses determined that these variables had little influence on the milk fat and telomere relationship. Nevertheless, other variables could explain some of the relationship between milk fat intake and telomere length identified in the present investigation." They didn't go into great detail as to what those confounders were, but it looks like they took that into account and isolated milk-fat percentage as well as they could. Source: https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/ https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/
- eej71 7y ago
  It sounds like one must still assume they correctly accounted for all confounders.
  - fermenflo 7y ago

purerandomness 7y ago

Alternative hypothesis: People who choose to trade flavour for lower milk fat tend to also be more risk-aware, prefer a healthier lifestyle (don't smoke, work out) which contribute to slower telomere shortening. People who chose flavour over lower milk fat would probably self-describe as "living the moment", likely tend to favour short-time gratification more, and do more activities that lead to faster telomere shortening.

ChuckNorris89 7y ago
My thoughts exactly. Does that 1% of extra fat really have such a negative effect o your body?
- clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
  I drink milk almost daily. Over a lifetime it might.
idclip 7y ago
You win! I also think it should say “correlates with” rather than account for.
ar_lan 7y ago
Obviously this is an anecdote, but what's ironic is that in my life, the "generally healthier" people all opt for either whole-milk or alternative kinds of milk (almond, oat, etc.), whereas the overweight people I know almost always opt for skim milk. I am a pretty active person and health-conscious, and in my group, we all typically agree that we aren't fond of the substitutes made in skim milk.
- onetimemanytime 7y ago
  I have observed the same thing. Drink skim milk, diet soda and then ear ice creams, burgers and fries. It's to lie to themselves, I think.
  - 7y ago

GoToRO 7y ago

What is the default fat percentage for the milk of a traditional cow?

dundercoder 7y ago
3.25% [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_content_of_milk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_content_of_milk

gowld 7y ago

Do people who drink 1% milk eat low fat pizza and yogurt? Do people who drink a lot of 1% love longer than people who drink a little 2%? What about 3.5%? Is this just boring p-hacking?

fermenflo 7y ago

I know everyone's reaction (mine included) was: "No shit, people who drink low-fat milk probably live healthier lives in general"... But it looks like they really did account for other variables and found that milk-fat percentage was the only strong factor in play: > "High-fat milk consumers may have lifestyles that are less healthy than low-fat milk drinkers. Since this possibility was recognized before the onset of the investigation, statistical adjustments were made for a dozen potential confounders. Statistical analyses determined that these variables had little influence on the milk fat and telomere relationship. Nevertheless, other variables could explain some of the relationship between milk fat intake and telomere length identified in the present investigation." Source: https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/ https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/

jelliclesfarm 7y ago
I am inclined to think genetic signature matters. Is the lengthening of telemores a genetic thing? I am not sure if that’s even a right question to ask.
rwallace 7y ago
Okay, but let's stop and think about it for ten seconds: Of course drinking a slightly different brand of milk doesn't make you live 4.5 years longer; the headline claim is obvious nonsense. (And as I understand it, it's now thought that to the extent there is any difference, it's in favor of the high-fat milk.) So then the conclusion seems to be that confounding factors have an extremely strong effect on the conclusion, even when the investigators have tried hard to screen them out. Why? What went wrong with the attempts to screen out the confounding factors?
- fermenflo 7y ago
  To be fair, it's a pretty large claim to just assume that something "went wrong with the attempts to screen out the confounding factors" and that the conclusion must be false. It's a shocking conclusion, I'll give you that. And to be honest, I'm not convinced either. You might very well be right. But it's a strong claim to make agains a peer-reviewed journal publication.

AceyMan 7y ago

Serious question: is 1% milkfat known to be "more healthy" than 2%? The body needs fats, and the USA (most of all) is still recovering from an unhealthy fear of fats instilled by the megacorps the past ~30 years. [me: grew up drinking 2% until I was fully grown / 18yrs]

2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
It's become more complicated: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/are-fats-so-bad https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/are-fats-so-b...

dannykwells 7y ago

Without a biological mechanism this is just a correlation, no matter how much statistical correction they claimed to do.

jwatte 7y ago

:doubt:

jobseeker990 7y ago

I'm skeptical. I've seen other studies where whole milk has a whole host of health benefits.

robwwilliams 7y ago

Not probable and highly likely to be confounded by secular and social cofactors. These dietary models and recommendations in humans are dumb “one size fits all”. We know from extensive animal research that genome-by-environmental effects are pervasive and can be large. For example in a highly diverse family of mice, a very high fat diet—60% calories from lard—is advantageous in terms of longevity in a few family members; although also true that this extreme diet is generally deleterious (see bioRxiv paper by Suheeta Roy and colleagues, GXE BXD study, 2019). The contrast between whole milk and no-fat milk is a comparatively subtle dietary shift. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, especially when they can impact millions of humans.

elsewhen 7y ago
the researchers took steps to mitigate the potential effects of confounding variables. here is a link to the full study: https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/ https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/

minikites 7y ago

Better yet, don't drink milk at all, it's unhealthy in the same ways as soda and fruit juice (milk does have a lot of sugar which I don't think a lot of people think about). Don't drink your calories.

MrDresden 7y ago

Consumption of a near 0% fat cheese called Skyr has historically been high since the 11th century in Iceland. I do wonder if that may have had a role to play in our high average age expectancy. Sadly our traditional food culture of Skyr, lean grass fed sheep and plenty of fish has given way to a more Americanized fast food culture. So it wouldn't surprise me if our averages will start trending downwards in a generation or two.

justboxing 7y ago

Drinking NO MILK accounts for 8 years of less aging and reduced cases of Osteoporosis in adults.

ameixaseca 7y ago

Just opened the study and read a bit about the methods and I wonder why they didn't include people that do not drink milk so the telomere lengths could be compared. We cannot know if milk (in general or 1%) is causing aging or protecting against it, cases which point for very different conclusions. This table also has something interesting that corroborates with this idea: https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/tab4/ https://new.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/tab4/ Note how the ones that rarely drink any milk have the same telomere lengths, same as the ones that drink full fat or 2% milk. SE is also so big for 1% and non-fat on the "rarely" row that telomere lengths can be considered to be the same for all the columns (on this row). It makes me wonder if it's the milk or if there is any other covariable that is playing a role here. In fact, they themselves cite this in the study ("Discussion" section): "However, it is possible that other dietary differences account for some of the biological aging differences among the milk fat categories." Therefore, I'd take this study with a grain of salt. If anything can be concluded by these numbers is that 1% milk may be protective, not that full-fat milk promotes aging.