Should you be consuming dairy or not? The information can get quite confusing. Let’s dive in and take a look at how dairy affects the body and four of the most common dairy-related questions.
Will dairy make me gain weight?
Ultimately weight loss is a matter of being in a caloric deficit. However, there are some foods that are thought to cause weight loss resistance or weight gain despite being in a caloric deficit.
This is thought to be because of dairy’s effect on blood sugar and insulin resistance. When you consume sugar (naturally-occurring in milk), your body produces insulin to help your body’s cells absorb that sugar. If you are insulin resistant, then the cells don’t respond to insulin as well, preventing glucose from entering your cells, which results in high levels of sugar building up in the blood. When sugar builds up in your blood, it quickly gets converted to fat. This can be caused by a high sugar or carb foods, however, it’s thought that dairy may also play a role in exacerbating this effect – potentially due to the milk proteins, hormones, or simply the carb content in milk.
However, the science doesn’t quite confirm this.1, 5,6,7,8 When looking at studies of low-fat and high-fat dairy we don’t see a significant impact on insulin resistance. Meaning that there is nothing compositionally harmful in dairy that will affect your metabolism. Therefore, if you eat dairy as part of a balanced diet, it shouldn’t contribute to metabolic factors (high blood sugar and insulin resistance) that would stall your weight loss.
Ultimately, it’s a personal choice. If you do decide to consume dairy, then choose organic grass-fed sources, if at all possible!
References:
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5867544/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5122229/
- http://www.afa-online.org/docs/faq_dairy.pdf
- http://www.afa-online.org/docs/faq_dairy.pdf
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6518137/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26511614/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5105034/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5867544/
