Pros and Cons of Dairy
Should dairy really be an important part of your diet and why so? This is quite a controversial topic with health professionals often discussing pros and cons of dairy, experts coming up with opposing claims. So it makes it even harder for an average consumer to decide whether to consume dairy, what type and how much daily?
Let’s start with the pros of dairy consumption:
- As with everything in life, if consumed in moderation dairy helps you take in the many nutrients your body needs: Protein, vitamin D, calcium, zinc, vitamins B1, B2, B6 and B12, vitamin A, vitamin E, folate, phosphorus, potassium and magnesium.
- Dairy- milk, yogurt, cheese is a good source of calcium, that is believed to be essential for tooth and bone health.
- Casein and whey proteins- commonly used in protein powders are available in dairy products. Both are digested easily, can be great for muscle growth and prevent soreness after gym workout. So eating yogurt, cottage cheese and cheese may make it easy for you to get in your daily protein.
- Dairy is a good source of vitamin D, which is also important for bone and tooth health.
- Vitamin A and E in dairy, especially in yogurt can give you a healthy glowing skin.
- It may defend against obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
Cons of Dairy Consumption:
- You need lactase enzyme to be able to digest milk lactose and as you get older you tend to have less of the stuff and lactose intolerance becomes more of an issue. This can make it hard for many to consume dairy products. They experience digestive problems such as gas, bloating, constipation and diarrhoea when they have certain types of dairy and not others.
- Being inflammatory, dairy can cause mucus production and sinus congestion .
- It may cause skin problems like acne in many adults.
- Casein and whey proteins are the most common reasons for food allergies in babies and children. Some claim that you grow out of these issues and some say you don’t and people that experience digestive issues no longer do when they stop having dairy products.
- Dairy products can be high in calories and saturated fats so they may not be great for your weight loss efforts.
Things to Consider While Consuming Dairy Products:
How much dairy you consume should be an individual choice at the end of the day. If you are one of the many people with lactose intolerance and dairy allergies, you’ll need to test dairy for yourself. Just cut out dairy for a couple of weeks and see what happens. I would still recommend against quitting dairy completely as you will be missing out on some great daily nutrition your body needs.
Your bones need the calcium but dairy is not the only source of it as many dairy companies claim. Nuts, seeds, green leafy vegetables and legumes are also good sources of calcium. And regular exercise, magnesium and vitamin D are also essential for your bone health.
While normal full cream dairy produce is high in saturated fats, there are low fat alternatives of most dairy products so you don’t have to suffer from weight gain. Whether low fat or full fat, dairy products are filling and satisfying so you won’t feel hungry quickly.
Regular milk is processed- pasteurized and homogenized and it contains hormones and antibiotics so it may be best to drink organic milk from grass-fed, non-hormone treated cows to avoid reproductive and digestive problems these may cause.
If you can’t consume regular cow’s milk, you can buy soy milk– from soybeans, rice milk, nut milk– from almonds or oat milk. Each one tastes slightly different than normal milk but are usually easy to get used to.
If dairy consumption is good for you will depend on the kind of dairy you consume and how much and with what foods.
How much dairy you should consume every day will come down to each person’s preferences and tolerance levels and you will need to find out for yourself and you probably won’t experience the bad effects as long as your daily consumption is in moderation.
You can get sufficient amounts of vitamin D from sunlight but not everyone is lucky in terms of sun availability where they live so they may want to go with the vitamin D fortified milk and yogurt for bone health and a variety of other health benefits vitamin D offers.
Results of Certain Studies on Dairy Products:
Low fat dairy products are linked to lower blood pressure in a Spanish study which claims that whey and casein proteins in dairy acted in a similar way to blood-pressure lowering drugs.
Another study found a link with the decreased likelihood of cardiovascular disease, lower blood pressure and type 2 diabetes and the increased dairy- cheese, yogurt and milk consumption while another study found that the more dairy adults consumed the greater part of their total calories came from saturated fat, but along with increased intake of other essential nutrients.
So by simply switching to low-fat dairy, you will reduce the amount of saturated fat you consume and still benefit from the nutrients in dairy.
Some even claim that saturated fat in dairy products is harmless and even beneficial and that the dairy is the best food there is in the world.
Others claim that dairy increases cancer risk and cardiovascular diseases and even can be bad for bone health.
There are arguments that raw dairy is good and not the pasteurized and full fat is better than low-fat as skimming removes the healthy fatty- linoleic acids.
If you get plenty of sunlight, exercise regularly, drink lots of water, eat green leafy vegetables and legumes, you will be less likely to experience diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure and heart disease and have stronger bones. But if you live a sedentary lifestyle, drink soda and consume large amounts of processed foods and not be exposed to sunlight, then you will probably need more dairy.
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