Get more dairy for weight loss and blood pressure

Dairy foods are both delicious and extremely rich in calcium and other nutrients. Growing bodies of research suggest that packing more dairy into your diet can help with both weight loss and high blood pressure. We'll go over the facts.

• Intriguing evidence suggests that dairy foods speed up weight loss, but more research is needed before drawing a complete conclusion.
• Several studies conducted by the University of Tennessee suggest that dairy can give dieters an edge. In one trial, nutritionists put obese volunteers on one of three low-calorie diets: one was low in dairy and calcium, one was low in dairy but included calcium supplements, and the third was high in dairy, involving three servings of low-fat milk or other foods per day. After six months, people in each group lost a significant amount of weight, but the dairy group slimmed down the most.
• In another study by the same team, people who adopted low-calorie diets and consumed several servings of dairy each day lost twice as much weight as volunteers in a similar group whose diets included little dairy.
• Many researchers believe that dairy foods contain compounds that interfere with the body's ability to make fat. These studies included just a few dozen subjects though, which raises the question of whether their findings would apply to most people. Furthermore, other studies have failed to show that adding dairy or calcium to a daily menu speeds up weight loss.

• A major study showed that consuming low-fat dairy products can help lower blood pressure. People who consume dairy foods regularly tend to have healthy blood pressure.
• Researchers once thought that calcium might be the key, which made sense. But in studies, taking calcium supplements often failed to lower blood pressure in people with hypertension.
• Nowadays, researchers suspect that vitamin D is a factor. Most milk products are enriched with this vitamin, which appears to create metabolic changes that lower blood pressure. What seems clear is that adding low-fat dairy to a healthy diet does help keep pressure in check.
• In the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) Trial, which involved 459 men and women, researchers compared a group of people who were told to eat more fruits and vegetables with a group instructed to do the same and to eat three daily servings of low-fat dairy while cutting back on saturated fat. A control group ate a typical Western diet, which is high in fat and low in dairy, fruit, and vegetables. After two months, people in the fruits-and-vegetables group who had hypertension lowered their pressure by an average of 7.2/2.8 points more than the control group. But people who also ate low-fat dairy foods improved even more, lowering their blood pressure by 11.4/5.5 points on average.

It's clear that eating more dairy has several health benefits, and it isn't hard to do. Whether you sub out your soft drink for some milk or add a serving of yogurt to your lunch, it's easy to get more dairy into your diet and experience the weight loss and blood pressure benefits it offers.