The Fats You Don’t Need to Fear, and the Carbs That You Do

> There is a ton of evidence demonstrating the pro-inflammatory and obesegenic properties of saturated fat.

Yet most of those studies have been shown to be flawed and are contradicted by newer studies. The world's health organizations have been back-paddling on this, because wouldn't you know, the trans-fats that we ended up eating on our quest for low-fat are the fats that are actually linked to cancer or cardiovascular disease.

> People want to vilify processed foods, but processing isn't inherently bad. Aspirin is basically processed willow bark

Aspirin is not food. Name a processed food that proved to be healthy.

And it is true that we as humans have always modified our environment and selected for the traits we wanted in our domesticated crops and animals. We also adapted to new foods, like cow milk. But this process has lasted for tens of thousands of years at least, whereas current "innovations" are newer than 30 years without us knowing enough about food and nutrition to make health claims. One day humanity might get used to the current blend of processed foods based primarily on corn, soy and fossil fuels, but I for one refuse to be the sacrice generation ;-)

> milk fat is quite poor from a health standpoint, being high in palmitate

Milk is a very complex substance and this reductionism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism) doesn't apply well to food. Here's one study that claims that people consuming high-fat milk are not more prone to cardiovascular diseases and even more so people consuming high-fat milk are less likely to get fat from it, versus people consuming low-fat milk: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00394-012-0418-1

Here's another study showing that people consuming full-fat diary have a 69% less risk of cardiovascular disease: http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v64/n6/abs/ejcn201045a.ht...

> the single biggest problem most people have is consuming too many calories

Yet those extra calories are not coming from high-fat milk, but from the cheap high-fructose corn syrup that has been flooding the market for tens of years due to subsidies, most of it ending up in the processed food we consume, including low-fat milk, because in case you don't know, in the process of stripping the fat from milk and of ultra-pasteurizing it, the milk loses its texture and taste, plus it has to travel a lot, so it has to be supplemented with things such as powder milk, artificial colourants and preservatives (based on petroleum) and HFCS.

> It isn't like there are a ton of fat soluble vitamins in milk that you lose switching to a reduced fat option, it's just empty calories.

Not all calories are created equal and milk is rich in essential nutrients that we need, like calcium, vitamin A and D, phosphorous or B vitamins amongst others. Even its fatty acids are essential for us. And there are recent studies showing that the fat in milk helps our body absorb it better, yet we are stripping it out, then enhancing its taste in a process meant to fool our senses. You think it's just the fat that goes, but that's not true.

No, the research demonstrating saturated fat's pro-inflammatory and obesegenic properties isn't being refuted, if anything the pace of publications (particularly on the pro-inflammatory aspect) has increased.

Want healthy processed food ingredients? Try whey protein, oat fiber, coconut flour (it isn't just ground coconut), resistant corn starch, fish oil (purified to remove heavy metals and the like) or medium chain triglycerides. All of these are better for you than the whole foods they're derived from.

You realize with the epidemiology studies you linked me that the answer is almost certainly not some "magic substance" present in milk fat, but a confounding factor that correlates with consumption of whole fat dairy? I've seen epidemiology studies showing butter intake is the single best predictor of adiposity among a wide variety of measured variables; shouldn't the "magic of milk-fat" result in butter-consumers being leaner?

Basically all the vitamins and minerals present in whole fat milk are also present in skim milk. As for the fatty acids in milk being essential, there are two essential fatty acids: linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid. Linoleic acid makes up about 3% of the fatty acid composition of milk fat, while alpha-linolenic acid is only at about 1%; not exactly a great source.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say "enhancing its taste in a process meant to fool our senses", the skim milk I buy has 2 ingredients: milk and vitamin d.

> For a person who wakes up around 7am the fast should begin around 5pm in order to let the sugars deplete around bed time. There is no reason to have readily available sugars while sleeping.

This is not convincing. According to [1] it seems like system glucose utilization is only about 10-20% lower during sleep.

Muscles store even more glycogen than the liver btw (~500g vs ~100g).

1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC293874/

Nor does it matter whether you eat carbs or fats or protein. In the immortal words of Doctor Rudy, 'You haf. To eat. Less.'

It really depends on your goals and what you are looking to learn. It sounds like maybe you are trying to put on weight, in which case I can't recommend whole milk enough :) But if you want to be more specific about what you'd like to learn I can recommend some resources.