The case for drinking whole milk

When you put in context saving, say, 150 calories (500 ml whole vs. skim milk) in the diet of an obese person who stuffs 4000+ calories in his belly, and practices no sports ("walking a lot" is not included, sorry), then we're talking about mental masturbation, not meaningful, rational, strategies.

When put into the perspective of the entire volume of nutritional research, the concepts which are established as certain are a tiny fraction of the total (for the great majority, one finds every possible opinion/research, and the opposite of it), so being skeptical is perfectly reasonable.

Quoting the article:

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> suggests that high-fat dairy consumption within typical dietary patterns is inversely associated with obesity risk.

Obesity risk.

> While not conclusive, the results "may provide a rationale for future research"

Not conclusive.

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Sadly, under these conditions, it's perfectly reasonable not to exclude that in 10 years, the opposite of such conclusions will be reached.

That saying has been around for ages, but strikes me as one of those superficially smart sounding but actually kind of fundamentally misguided phrases that sometimes become popular. Unless someone is suggesting an all cows milk diet, I suppose.

First of all, quality matters. You could satisfy your entire calorie requirement with lard, but that would be extremely detrimental to your health.

Also, how our bodies process food is still not well-understood in detail (although there are tons of self-titled experts claiming otherwise). In other words, excess calories == weight gain and insufficient calories == weight loss don't work out just as nicely as you'd think (I think there was an article on HN recently that even pointed out different people have different "default weights" they would find very difficult to stray from in either direction).

Additionally simply not eating that much can be very difficult. Not everyone has the time, energy and money to ensure they eat healthy (and the right things eat the right times of the day) -- although of course for energy this can be somewhat of a catch-22 (bad eating habits lead to lack of energy leading to bad eating habits). And there's also the problem of satiation and rabbit starvation: it's hard to stick with a diet if your body signals you that you're starving and must eat.

As a rule of thumbs, sure, just eat less calories if you're overweight. But good luck sticking with that if you don't have the time, energy and money to experiment with how you can make that sustainable. Otherwise the "yo-yo effect" wouldn't be such a widespread and widely-known problem.