Drinking whole milk is worse for your heart than consuming low-fat milk, a recent large study suggests.
Researchers found that drinking low-fat milk is associated with a lower risk of death due to heart-related problems as well as death due to any cause, when compared with drinking whole milk.
The findings were published in a scientific journal of the American Society for Nutrition.
Experts have long urged people to drink low-fat or fat-free milk as a way to lower the risk of developing heart disease. However, the researchers note that there has been controversy about a lack of science backing such advice.
Some studies have even suggested that saturated fatty acids from dairy might be less harmful to the heart than saturated fatty acids from other sources. Saturated fatty acids raise blood levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, also known as “bad” cholesterol.
For the recent study, researchers analyzed medical and dietary data on more than 73,000 Norwegian people who were followed for a median of 33 years. Their average age was 41 at the outset.
Over the course of the 33-year follow-up period, about 26,000 of the people studied died. More than half of them died due to heart disease, coronary artery disease or heart attack.
The researchers found that compared with whole milk, drinking low-fat milk was associated with a lower risk of death due to heart disease (7% lower), coronary artery disease (12% lower), heart attack (10% lower) and any cause (11% lower).
They also found that drinking whole milk is associated with an increased risk of sudden death from unknown causes. This risk was 80% higher for the study participants who drank the most whole milk versus those who drank the least.
No such relationship was found between those two drank the most and least low-fat milk.
Less milk might be better regardless of the type, though.
When the researchers looked at total consumption of milk of any kind, they found an association with the risk of death from heart disease and death from any cause. The more milk a person consumed, the higher these risks.
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