Here's a great chart that compares Raw Milk vs Conventional milk from Organic Pastures. I send this to my friends when they don't want to hear what's really in conventional milk: http://organicpastures.com/whyraw.html

If its from grain fed cows, no fat milk wins hands down. If you want to get fatter everyday, do like a poster above does and drink 2 liters of whole milk a day (on top of the food that OF COURSE your still going to consume).

Whoa! Fat soluble vitamins don't need fat in order to be digested. Skim milk has vitamins A and D, just like whole milk does. Fat soluble vitamins are called that because your body stores them in fat (and in the liver), not because you need to consume them in fat to benefit from them. So much misinformation out there.

Also, skim milk has more lactose because it contains more non-fat solids per serving than whole or 2% due to the process of removing the fat, and replacing it with addition non-fat milk to make up the same volume. The difference, by the way, is quite insignificant, such that looking at the nutritional facts on a carton shows no difference between the butterfats, on sugars.

Dr. Oz, by the way, is an entertainer and mis-informer, whose goal is to sell more books, and more advertising on his show. Watch it for entertainment, DO NOT watch it for lifestyle choices.

Start with a compromise: 2% that's more than half the fat of whole milk.

Skim milk contains only slightly more casein or lactose, nothing that would make any difference. I have no use for it, even back in my LF days. But 2% is a nice compromise.

If you feel you need more milk fat, eat butter ;)

GYDAY;

i dink full fat organic unhomogenised grass fed cows milk.....

sometimes 2 litres a day.....

im as strong as an ox..lean and athletic at 45....i had my doubts after being dairy free for 3 years....but after a hard days work the full fat milk just helps my body recover like nothing else......

true..i would be leaner without it....but big deal....i would also be weaker and more tired.....

the massai eat meat and drink full fat milk and blood....you reckon they arent paleo/primal.....

i dont eat any grains or legumes....i just am paleo with the exception of the full fat unhomogenised organic milk...

and its sublime....

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/food/is-skim-milk-making-you-fat-2479492/ I like this article: skim milk is produced by oxidizing the cholesterol in it. In animal studies oxidized cholesterol causes heart disease and is carcinogenic. Also weight loss was better with full-fat dairy low-fat dairy was associated with overweight, obese children.

Full-fat dairy has the large, fluffy LDL (pattern A) which is NOT implicated in heart disease (Gary Taubes - Why We Get Fat, Good Calories/Bad Calories and Fathead movie). Pattern B is the small, dense LDL associated with heart disease.You can only have Pattern A or B NOT both is my understanding.

Pattern A: low triglycerides, low VLDL, large fluffy LDL, high HDL - all heart healthy/protective

Pattern B: high triglycerides, high VLDL, small dense LDL, low HDL - all heart disease producing

A lot of labs/doctors don't distinguish between large fluffy vs. small dense types of LDL which is why I look at triglycerides and HDL - a much better indicator. Also you will either fit into Pattern A or B so I think you can figure out which LDL (small-dense dangerous ones vs. large fluffy benign) you are producing by levels of HDL and triglycerides.

There's more on insulin, glucagon, VLDL and the like in this article. A bit technical, but still a good read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-density_lipoprotein

I love how everyone has good contributions like that saturated fats are good and that whole fat dairy is more nutritious. Good thread so far. I will add that dairy fat is the best sorce of trans-palmitoleic acid which has insulin-sensitizing properties. It's seriously good for you, so that's one big reason to eat the damn fat (ETDF).

http://www.annals.org/content/153/12/790.short?rss=1

In multivariate analyses, whole-fat dairy consumption was most strongly associated with higher trans-palmitoleate levels. Higher trans-palmitoleate levels were associated with slightly lower adiposity and, independently, with higher high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels (1.9% across quintiles; P = 0.040), lower triglyceride levels (−19.0%; P < 0.001), a lower total cholesterol–HDL cholesterol ratio (−4.7%; P < 0.001), lower C-reactive protein levels (−13.8%; P = 0.05), and lower insulin resistance (−16.7%, P < 0.001). Trans-palmitoleate was also associated with a substantially lower incidence of diabetes, with multivariate hazard ratios of 0.41 (95% CI, 0.27 to 0.64) and 0.38 (CI, 0.24 to 0.62) in quintiles 4 and 5 versus quintile 1 (P for trend < 0.001). Findings were independent of estimated dairy consumption or other fatty acid dairy biomarkers. Protective associations with metabolic risk factors were confirmed in the validation cohort.

I'm not entirely sure of the mechanism but that is one powerful statistic on circulating levels. Dairy fat is associated with higher levels, higher levels are strongly associated with better metabolic health. Good enough for me.

Full fat dairy has a higher concentration of fat, therefore lower concentration of lactose and casein, the two bad things in dairy.

Here is more info from Stephan Guyanet's blog:

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/04/full-fat-dairy-for-cardiovascular.html

fat isn't evil + processing usually makes it worse

If the fat is grassfed, then it is definitely better. CLA,for example, inhibits IGF-1. It will also have fat soluble nutrients. If the fat isn't grassfed, then I would probably just not eat the product because it has all the potentially harmful things like casein and lactose, and not much of the good stuff.

I would explain it just as whole milk is a real food and is in its natural state. Since dairy fat isn't bad for you, why take it off? (If the argument is for calories, why not just skip the product entirely?)

there were recent studies that showed likelihood that all milk except for full fat milk aggravated prostate cancer in men.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/01/02/us-nonfat-cancer-idUSHAR26781420080102

"In an overall analysis of food groups, the consumption of dairy products and milk were not associated with prostate cancer risk, the authors found. Further analysis, however, suggested that low-fat or nonfat milk did increase the risk of localized tumors or non-aggressive tumors, while whole milk decreased this risk."

Of course she's a she not a he, but if she buys it "for the house" then maybe others drink it and of course it may affect other cancers this way. I'm also with Matthew when he says if there were no skim milk, there'd be no cream and it seems a waste for no one to use it, but maybe drinking it isn't the best use.

If there was no skim milk then there would be no cream.

I'm just saying that cream is a result of making skim milk, litterally skimming the fat of the top of the milk. It is rather a waste if no one uses all the leftover skim milk.

When you take the fat out of whole milk, you are essentially increasing the percentage of sugar in it which makes it more insulin spiking.

I learned that whole dairy was better from Nourishing Traditions and WAPF. Before that I was a low fat believer. There are a lot of great bloggers who deal with this topic she could read if the book is too much. In general maybe she should learn more about the real food movement and that might push her to get foods that are the least processed.

You could try Nina Planck's book, Real Food.

As others have noted, your simple point is the crux of the "fat is bad" debate. Reading the book "Nourishing Traditions" should give you some "talking points".

You can Google on the phrase "low fat debacle" to get more info.

Another thing to point out is that skim milk is a waste product in dairy production. Products that require cream are produced by extracting the cream from the milk and the leftover is "skimmed" or "skim" milk. This watery residue is not really fit for consumption nor nutritious. In order to sell it (i.e. get rid of it and make money at the same time), they process this by adding back cream and fortifying it with enough vitamins to be worthwhile.

There is a book by Theodor Koller titled "The utilization of waste products" which describes how skim milk is produced and sold. The title alone should have some impact on avid skim milk drinkers.

Incidentally, soy milk is in the same category -- it is the waste product from producting tofu and other soybean related products. They used to throw it away, but then figured out a way to process it so that it looked kind of like milk, and now they sell it.

The best way to fatten up your livestock is to give them large quantities of low-quality feed...

I'd let someone else do it:

http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/QAA400919/Rethinking-Saturated-Fat.html

My only question is this. Prior to my paleo adventure, we switched our kids from whole to 1% milk. Both of them leaned out, and there is a 4 year age difference between them. This was the only change we did to their diets and it took about 2 months. No diarrheal issues to credit the fat loss, no major growth spurts. They still drink 1% today when they do have milk, so I am hesitant about swapping back up to the unleaded stuff.

*show videos on fat cows in milkindustry and how they suffer

*explain that cows who eat grass have more fatsoluble vitamins and that this are make us strong

*maybe she understand that milk loose its vitamis when more processed. Raw milk ist best, grass fed, organic, not pasturized and never homogenizid or more proccessing.

h

Milk comes out of the cow with fat in it - that's the way it is naturally. As a person who is lactose-intolerant, I can definitely say that no, it's not better for you unless you think blasting your colon is healthy.

A cup of whole milk has less sugar in it because there is more fat in it. If you drink a cup of skim milk, you're drinking more diarrhea-inducing lactose per cup without the benefits of the fat in whole milk.

I don't know how great your friend will find my argument, but it worked for some members of my family. Generally, non-paleos seem to recognize that sugar is bad for you. So, I just explain that skim has more sugar and that seems to do the trick! Not to mention the taste of whole milk is SO much better!

If you've convinced her about fats, then thats the message you should use to make her shift to whole milk. After all, what is skimmed milk but whole milk minus the fat

The argument isn't limited to whole vs skim milk. Once she understands the falsity of 'low-fat' approaches to nutrition, it will fall into place that whole milk is better than skim. So you might want to start by helping her learn about why fat ISN'T the enemy... i.e. Taubes, Harris, etc.