Why Skim Milk Can Make you Fat

As a kid, we grew up drinking lots and lots of milk. Being in Minnesota, and living in the middle of MANY dairy farms, it was pretty much the norm.

My parents always bought 2% milk – and as kids, we hated drinking anything else but that. Once I was out of the house and started buying my own food, I switched to skim milk – I was a firm believer I would get fat drinking anything else.

In fact, everything I bought was fat free or low fat. I was terrified of getting fat. 

In 2011, we switched to raw full-fat milk and 7 yrs later… I find myself drinking about a quart a day and my weight hasn’t fluctuated. .. which led me to realize that full-fat milk is definitely not as evil as it’s promoted to be.

You should absolutely trade in that skim and low-fat milk for fuller fat varieties, and at best, raw, full fat, unpasteurized milk.  Here are 3 reasons why.

Low Fat is Lacking in Nutrients

Full fat, raw milk is rich in butterfat – that butterfat has a great source of vitamin A and D. But when that fat is gone (skim or low-fat milk), the fat-soluble vitamins (are removed.  It’s incredibly hard to get those fat-soluble vitamins from anything else in your diet.  Milk producers add those back in in a synthetic form – but synthetic forms cannot be assimilated into the body the same way – without the fat, they pass right through.

Low Fat Dairy is not a Health Food

Regular consumption of full-fat dairy is great for supporting a healthy immune system.  Clean, raw unprocessed milk is highly nutritious food – it’s great for boosting the immune system, and is a valuable source of nutrients including proteins, probiotics, enzymes, phosphorus and more.

CLA, short for conjugated linoleic acid and abundant in milk from grass-fed cows, is a heavily studied, polyunsaturated Omega-6 fatty acid with promising health benefits (33). 

Among CLA’s many potential benefits: it raises metabolic rate, helps remove abdominal fat, boosts muscle growth, reduces resistance to insulin, strengthens the immune system and lowers food allergy reactions. As luck would have it, grass-fed raw milk has from 3-5 times the amount found in the milk from feed lot cows (35)(36) (Source)

Full fat milk has Palmitic Acid, which protects against insulin resistance, and lowers the risk of developing Type II Diabetes.   Full fat milk has Conjugated Linoleic acid, which can lower your cancer risk. You need that butterfat to reap the benefits of supporting a healthy cardiovascular and immune system.

Full fat dairy with saturated fat sustains a healthy blood sugar for an extended period of time. When you eat low fat, the blood sugar issues begin to rise.

Low fat dairy doesn’t keep the pounds off

Full-fat dairy takes longer to digest. It helps keep you fuller longer. It has more fat and calories but you can go longer between meals.  I have been consuming raw milk full-fat dairy for 7 years & have had kids through that time but I haven’t tanked on additional pounds.

Studies have also shown that children who drank skim or low-fat milk were the fattest of all, regardless of race, socioeconomic status or ethnicity. 

To reach the point of being low fat or no fat, they have to go through some pretty harsh processing – homogenization, pasteurization and then they are synthetically refortified, and at that point, our food industry declares it a health food. 

Even more, the harsh processing of the milk is so extreme that many people, at that point, cannot even digest it – they are intolerant, and not so much to the milk but they are intolerant to what has been done to the milk.

Unlike processed milk, raw, whole, full-fat milk contains lactobacilli bacteria = which essentially digests lactose.  Not to mention that pasteurization of milk kills the harmful bacteria within the milk – it also kills the bacteria, good fats, vitamins, and enzymes that help you digest the milk.

Your store pasteurized milk adds vitamin D back into the milk before being sold in store shelves – but the synthetic vitamins added back in are not as easily absorbed by the body – companies cannot add back in probiotics – therefore making processed milk hard to digest, and something to avoid if you are lactose intolerant.

Does drinking low-fat milk or skim milk make you fatter? It does – and that is because when you reduce the saturated fat in a person’s diet, they turn to carbs (grains/sugar) to fill in the gap.  Those grains and sugars make you fat – NOT the saturated fat. By drinking low fat or skim milk you are missing out on the benefits of saturated fat – a steady blood sugar, steady insulin, that keep you fuller for longer.

It helps reduce those cravings that are impossible to conquer than when you decide to eat a diet that is low fat and includes skim milk.

So what do you do? Drink a diet rich in raw, whole, full-fat milk, butter, and yogurt and you’ll quickly realize that your cravings may diminish. Please, don’t be confused about fat – the right fat can be so good for you.

*We believe Raw Milk to be the BEST form of dairy available to us ~ for a multitude of reasons. Before letting us know that raw milk is dangerous, and not necessary for our body, please consider reading more about Raw Milk and the benefits.