Is Your Judgement Clouded by the Milk?
Watch out — it’s coming to a place near you!
Specifically, it’s an event called “The Great American Weight Loss Challenge”, and it’s on the move.
It’s going around the country on a 75-city tour, supposedly encouraging people to sign up for a 12-week plan that provides the tools to lose weight in a healthy way.
Sponsored by the nation’s milk processors and dairy farmers, the event consists of free wellness events and research information that shows a connection between milk and weight loss.
Now here’s the problem…
The connection between milk and weight loss is not exactly what they preach.
And I don’t want you to be misled.
Drinking milk is not a weight loss strategy.
In fact, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) petitioned the FDA on June 9th, requesting it put an end to false and misleading claims by dairy product manufacturers that contend milk consumption promotes weight and fat loss.
PCRM is calling on the FDA to declare all dairy products labeled with these claims as “misbranded,” to institute a product recall, and to require the manufacturers to publish corrective ads and food labels.
“The vast majority of scientific studies show that milk either causes weight gain or else has no effect at all on weight or body fat,” says Amy Joy Lanou, Ph.D., senior nutrition scientist of PCRM. “Nonfat milk is 55 percent sugar, while whole milk is nearly 50 percent fat, as a percentage of calories. Neither one is a formula for weight loss.”
And in another study published in April, it was found that women who added extra milk to their diets for a year lost no more weight than women who consumed the same number of calories, but drank less milk.
Again, I need to point out the obvious: Nobody is saying that you shouldn’t drink milk.
It’s just that you need to be careful about the amount of milk you drink.
Milk is not the magical weight loss food/drink.
It does not mean that the more you drink, the more weight you’ll lose.
In fact, it’s just the opposite.
If you drink too much milk, you’ll be guaranteed to put on the pounds.
Tracy Lee
Weight Loss for Women Over 40
July 13th, 2005 at 9:29 pm
It’s refreshing to have the dairy industry exposed like you have! Not only do I not believe that milk promotes weight loss, in fact, I believe that dairy in general is not as healthy for us as the dairy industry would have us believe.
October 16th, 2005 at 6:15 am
Children under the age on 12months generally have an allegic reaction to milk. I slowly weaned my daughter on to whole milk just after she turned one year. Over the last year since her birth I’ve been rather fat, not loosing the baby fat after having her. About the same time I started her on whole milk I started drinking more milk. In ten years I’ve probably drank five glasses of milk. In the past two months I’ve drank on average two to five glasses a day, I didn’t know anything about a milk challange really don’t care I’ve just been craving milk. In two months of not changing my daily routine and just drinking more milk I’ve lost about 25lbs. Yesterday I put on a pair of pants that I could not fit my fat ass into in August. So I don’t know, milk seems to be working for me.. I also think each individual body is different..