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Fed up with skimmed milk in your coffee? A Scottish study has found that men who drink milk do not have a higher risk of heart disease Well, I'd just like you to know that I've been vindicated - and maybe you too. A year or so ago, I got fed up drinking skimmed milk coffee - the taste was appalling and I reckoned life was too short not to enjoy the occasional flat white. So I reverted to proper coffees but with some trepidation. Now, thanks to a recent paper, I think I can relax even more with that fully expressed espresso. Nearly 6000 men in Scotland have been followed from the early 1970s, to see how their health fares against a number of variables, one of which was the amount of milk they drank - in the days before you needed a degree in chemistry to decide on which carton of milk to buy. They could find no evidence that men who drank a lot of milk - more than a third of a pint per day (remember pints?), they could find no evidence of raised coronary risk. In fact, if anything, they had lower chances of stroke and heart attack. Milk drinkers were a healthier group in general at the start of the study, but even controlling for that, there was certainly no added risk. And when you look at the big picture - at all the studies where milk has featured as a factor - the view is mixed, with quite a few large studies reckoning that milk intake is beneficial, particularly in stroke reduction. It may be due to calcium; it may just be a reflection of better childhood nutrition; it may be due to the fact that not all fats are bad for you. Who knows? ... and maybe, who cares, when someone hands you a coffee that actually tastes the way coffee should. And before you ask, no - the study wasn't funded by the dairy industry.
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