• by Thom Forbes , January 8, 2014

Researchers are a busy bunch these days, and one life form that’s loving it are the cows. 

They are “dancing with glee,” a Philly.com hed informs us above a caption explaining that “a 1,000-pound work of art featuring two dancing cows next to three human beings drinking milkshakes is made entirely out of butter and on display at the 2014 Pennsylvania Farm Show. Are they dancing over the fact that per-capita consumption of butter in America reached a 40-year high in 2012?” as the American Butter Institute (ABI) reports.

Or are they celebrating recent studies that suggest that 1. Butter and 2. Organic whole milk are actually better for us than the heavily processed “low” or “no” fat options.

Indeed, “margarine and other spreads are no longer viewed as healthier alternatives,” Anuja Miner, the executive director of ABI noted in a press release announcing a new logo for the organization, “as consumers are demanding more pure and natural products.” Butter intake has increase 25% since 2002 and per capita consumption reached 5.6 pounds a year in 2012, up from a low point of 4.1 pounds in 1997, the ABI said.

The ABI “recently launched a marketing campaign on social media called ‘Go Bold with Butter,’” David Pierson writes in the Los Angeles Times. “The group sees young Americans raised on the Food Network as key to the industry's continued success.” 

And it’s benefitting from “more understanding about the health hazards of its processed counterparts” that contain trans fats —“vegetable oils that have been blended with hydrogen to boost shelf life and reproduce the qualities of butter or lard,” Pierson reports. 

Trans fats will be all but banned under proposed FDA rules and products such as Unilever’s Country Crock margarine are already trans-fat free. But “despite butter's relative benefits compared with alternatives, it's not health food,” Pierson points out. “In a word, butter is fat — and not the good kind.”

That’s why we’ve been consuming all that watery-looking skim milk all these years, right? Because it contains no unwholesome fat?

In an editorial in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, two prominent obesity and nutrition experts argued in September that “there is actually little data to support the idea that skim and low-fat milk lead to better health outcomes than whole milk,” as Time’s Alexandra Sifferlin reported. Their reasons include:

• “There isn’t much evidence to support the idea that drinking lower-calorie beverages in general leads to lower-calorie intake.”

• “Low-fat milk may lead drinkers to consume more high-glycemic-index foods, which can increase the level of triglycerides that can amplify the effect of heart-disease risk factors such as high cholesterol and hypertension.”

But milk producers aren’t likely to trot out this research in their marketing campaigns. The authors point out that “humans evolved on a diet free of milk, and milk consumption in general is nutritionally unnecessary, as a healthy diet can provide adequate calcium through beans, nuts, green leafy vegetables, and certain types of fish,” Melanie Haiken reports on Forbes.com.

Another study, published last month in the peer-reviews online journal PLOS One, found a surprising “magnitude of difference in milk from organic farms,” according to its lead author in a story by the Los Angeles Times’ Mary MacVean. Organic milk “was found to have lower levels of omega-6 fatty acids and higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids than regular milk,” ProCon.org reports.

The study also questions “the common recommendations to consume nonfat or low-fat dairy products,” according to the Los Angeles Times piece. “Consumers are going to get the full measure of this benefit in organic milk if they buy whole milk,” Charles Benbrook, a program leader at the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources at Washington State University, tells MacVean.

The scientists examined 220 organic milk samples from the Organic Valley cooperative and 164 conventional milk samples. We would be remiss if we did not mention that Organic Valley was a funder of the study, although it “had no role in the design of the study or its analysis, according to National Public Radio,” ProCon.org reports.

This reminds us of a short piece about 18 sets of sugary soda data that was published in PLOS|Medicine last week. It set out to determine if “industry sponsors' financial interests might bias the conclusions of scientific research” into the question of whether there is an “association” between the consumption of “sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and weight gain or obesity.”

“Among the reviews with no conflicts of interest, 10 of 12, or 83.3%, reported that sugary drinks were directly associated with weight gain or obesity,” Nicholas Bakalar reported in the New York Times yesterday. “The conclusions of studies supported by industry were a mirror image: five of six — the same 83.3% — reported that there was insufficient evidence to draw a conclusion.”

The authors’ conclusion? “Financial conflicts of interest may bias conclusions.”

Whodathunkit?

Hey, though, is anybody out there working on a study that shows that white bread is better for you than those gritty whole grain varieties? Builds strong bodies, and satisfies the palate, in ways that we haven’t even thought about yet, perhaps?