Taste preferences are malleable, though. I grew up drinking skim milk, and switched over to whole milk when I left for college. I grew a love for the taste of delicious, delicious fats in my drinks.
The first step was switching to higher-fat milk in eating bowls of cereal. It’s a good way to get used to the taste while tricking your brain into not noticing the ‘weird’ texture.
Switching to a high-fat diet helped too. Whole milk really isn’t all that fatty—half and half is better, and heavy cream is a bit much straight (I can drink it straight, but it is way too easy to give my digestive system too much to handle).
There’s nothing inherent about preferences. If you want to include milk as party of a healthy diet, you may as well prefer healthier milk.
Saturated fat may not be more unhealthy than unsaturated fat (although I’m not sure how conclusive the evidence on this is,) but that doesn’t mean that adding calories from fat, without subtracting something else, will make your diet healthier.
Sorry, I kind of assumed you were struggling with “I want to improve my diet by replacing carbohydrate calories from skim milk with fat calories from whole milk”. The point I was trying to make is that preferences are malleable things, and when you don’t care as much about the cost of changing them as compared to the benefits of having ‘better’ preferences, you can go ahead and change them.
If you’re not trying to lose weight, then no reason at all. If you prefer skim milk, then by all means drink it. However, assuming
You are lactose tolerant
You are trying to lose weight
Then you’re better off switching to products like whole milk or, better yet, heavy cream, that provide a higher proportion of calories from fat (trans fats excepted, but those aren’t typically present in milk) and less to none from carbohydrates and protein.
Also, after a little googling, I so see that some people have raised concerns about possible health effects arising from the industrial production of skim milk. It seems farmers don’t just skim the cream off like I thought, but add various other things like milk solids and Vitamin A and D back in. At first glance, the evidence of harmful effects from this doesn’t seem compelling—mostly extrapolations from animal studies and hypothesized biochemical causal chains that aren’t actually tied to overall mortality rates, quality of life, or anything else we care about. However, it is suggestive that this subject might be worthy of further research.
Similar to your comment about diet coke, having drunk reduced fat milk for about fifteen years, whole milk now tastes nasty to me.
Why switch to whole milk when it’s not inherently preferable?
Taste preferences are malleable, though. I grew up drinking skim milk, and switched over to whole milk when I left for college. I grew a love for the taste of delicious, delicious fats in my drinks.
The first step was switching to higher-fat milk in eating bowls of cereal. It’s a good way to get used to the taste while tricking your brain into not noticing the ‘weird’ texture.
Switching to a high-fat diet helped too. Whole milk really isn’t all that fatty—half and half is better, and heavy cream is a bit much straight (I can drink it straight, but it is way too easy to give my digestive system too much to handle).
There’s nothing inherent about preferences. If you want to include milk as party of a healthy diet, you may as well prefer healthier milk.
In what way is higher fat milk healthier?
Saturated fat may not be more unhealthy than unsaturated fat (although I’m not sure how conclusive the evidence on this is,) but that doesn’t mean that adding calories from fat, without subtracting something else, will make your diet healthier.
Sorry, I kind of assumed you were struggling with “I want to improve my diet by replacing carbohydrate calories from skim milk with fat calories from whole milk”. The point I was trying to make is that preferences are malleable things, and when you don’t care as much about the cost of changing them as compared to the benefits of having ‘better’ preferences, you can go ahead and change them.
If you’re not trying to lose weight, then no reason at all. If you prefer skim milk, then by all means drink it. However, assuming
You are lactose tolerant
You are trying to lose weight
Then you’re better off switching to products like whole milk or, better yet, heavy cream, that provide a higher proportion of calories from fat (trans fats excepted, but those aren’t typically present in milk) and less to none from carbohydrates and protein.
Also, after a little googling, I so see that some people have raised concerns about possible health effects arising from the industrial production of skim milk. It seems farmers don’t just skim the cream off like I thought, but add various other things like milk solids and Vitamin A and D back in. At first glance, the evidence of harmful effects from this doesn’t seem compelling—mostly extrapolations from animal studies and hypothesized biochemical causal chains that aren’t actually tied to overall mortality rates, quality of life, or anything else we care about. However, it is suggestive that this subject might be worthy of further research.