Drinking a glass of milk at every meal may help you burn more fat and calories throughout the day, suggests a study in the December issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Researchers at Purdue University found that women who consumed 3 to 4 servings of milk and milk products each day during the year-long study burned more fat and calories from a meal compared to women who ate little dairy.
The study compared the effects of a low-dairy diet (1-2 servings) to a high-dairy diet (3-4 servings) among 19 normal weight women without restricting calories. The high-dairy group increased their calcium intake by primarily drinking more lowfat or fat-free milk (from less than 800 mg to 1000-1400 mg per day).
The goal of the study was to examine the mechanism behind dairy's reported role in enhancing fat loss. A growing body of evidence has shown that higher intakes of calcium and dairy are associated with greater fat loss, but little is known about how and why it works.
The researchers found that increasing dairy intake appears to suppress a hormone in the body, which may help increase fat oxidation, or the amount of fat that's burned. From the results of this study, the researchers put together a rough calculation based on the increased fat burned from a meal that suggests a high-dairy diet followed over a year could potentially result in the loss of 10 pounds of fat.
