USDA and Dairy Industry to stop promoting dairy for weight loss

You probably have seen the advertising campaigns for “Milk Your Diet. Lose Weight” and the “3-A-Day. Burn More Fat, Lose Weight” on TV or the web promoting dairy as a weight loss aid. Could it be true? Milk, designed for calves to double in size in a couple of months, could now also help you lose weight?

Largely the results of the lobbying efforts by a Washington based group, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), the FTC recently announced that the dairy industry would stop all weight loss related advertising and marketing activities “until further research provides stronger, more conclusive evidence.”

Weight Loss Claims
Weight loss claims found in advertising and marketing material for dairy included:

• “Consuming at least 24 ounces of dairy products every day will cause you to lose weight and body fat based on the special combination of nutrients, including calcium, in dairy products”
• “getting calcium and protein from low fat or fat-free milk could help you lose more weight than by just reducing calories”
• “And milk is the only beverage that naturally provides the unique combination of calcium and protein for healthy, effective weight loss support… So it’s time to add healthy weight loss to the already extensive list of good things that milk can do for your body.”
• and my favorite: “increasing dairy consumption to just 3-4 servings a day could result in billions of dollars of health care cost savings.”

Conflict of Interest
These weight loss claims were largely based on the small, poorly controlled studies of Micheal Zemel, from the University of Tennessee, who in addition to receiving research funding from the dairy industry holds a patent using dairy or calcium supplements for the the prevention and treatment of obesity. In these studies, Dr Zemel fails to report the caloric intake of study participants making it impossible to determine whether his weight loss findings could be explained by calories alone. More troubling is that his weight loss findings for dairy have not been replicated by other researchers.

Lack of Evidence
PCRM, which advocates a vegan diet for optimal health, points out that these weight loss claims for dairy are not substantiated by the medical literature:

Research studies of Dairy/Calcium supplements with no calorie restriction

• Of 9 studies with dairy, 2 showed weight gain, while 7 showed no weight loss improvement.
• Of 17 calcium supplement trials, only 1 showed greater weight loss with calcium supplement group. This study did not involve diary as treatment.
• Of all these 26 studies, 10 measured body fat and no improvement was seen with dairy or calcium supplementation compared with controls.

Research Studies of Dairy/Calcium supplements with calorie restriction

• 3 studies, not conducted by Dr Zemel, showed no weight loss benefit for dairy or calcium supplementation.

This is the unfortunate story of a dairy industry hungry to jump start flagging milk consumption, spotty science of a lead investigator with a financial stake in these claims and lack of governmental oversight to protect the public interest (the agricultural department approved these ad campaigns). Kudos to the PCRM for setting the record straight.

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