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Dairy-diet link shakier than ads indicate

Got milk? And high hopes it will help you shed a few pounds?

The dairy industry is counting on it, thanks in part to a $200-million ad campaign that confidently touts studies suggesting a connection between consuming dairy products and losing weight.

But dieters might want to delay sporting milk mustaches.

Though the National Dairy Council and the researchers it pays stand by their claims, few others have endorsed the link. Even some scientists whose research supports that idea say its conclusions are premature.

"The bulk of the studies suggest a possible role, but there are inconsistencies in the data," said Dr. David Ludwig, an obesity expert at Children's Hospital Boston. In a 2002 study, he found that dairy aided weight loss. "My concern is the advertising claims by the Dairy Council have well outstripped the available data," he said.

The dairy campaign is based on research by Michael Zemel, a nutrition professor at the University of Tennessee who began studying the link between dairy and weight during the late 1980s.

Since 2000, he has published several studies that found people who eat a lower-calorie diet and consume the recommended low-fat or nonfat dairy servings lose nearly twice the weight as those who only cut calories. But it's not Zemel's science that has been criticized - it's the dairy industry's conclusions from it.

The committee of scientists who drew up the 2005 federal dietary guidelines found the data inconclusive. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Heart Association came to a similar decision.

Dr. Walter Willett, a Harvard University nutrition expert whose recent research suggests dairy doesn't help weight loss, said Zemel's studies are too small to sustain the industry's claims.

"You need to look across all the evidence," he said. "The larger randomized trials that have been done, they don't show weight loss. If anything, they show weight gain."

[Last modified July 18, 2005, 01:38:10]