Got Vitamin D in Your Milk? Got Fat?

You may have a negative association with fat - when there is extra on your body you might not be happy so you may attempt to avoid it when you hear the term associated with your food. And it is definitely a healthy choice to avoid meat that has a lot of fat, foods that are deep fried with fat soaking into every crevice, and other foods that slide down nice and easy because they're coated in the stuff (ie: pizza, nachos, anything else smothered in cheese).

If you have some basic vitamin knowledge, you probably also know that we need some dietary fat in order for our bodies to absorb the fat soluble vitamins which you can remember using the image of a deck of cards: ADEK. Other vitamins are water soluble so our body doesn't have a very hard time absorbing them and also any excess that we have in our body comes out in our urine, just as excess water does that is not needed by the body. But back to our friends ADEK.

I learned early on that these vitamins need fat in order to be absorbed. That's all well and good. Many foods containing these vitamins are naturally often served with fats (A and K found in veggies might either be sauteed in oil or served with a dressing for example). But it took a rotation during my dietetic internship for a lesson to really sink in about vitamin D.

A little bit of quick back story: I grew up in Wisconsin, drinking milk with meals. Because my parents were health conscious, the milk that I grew up drinking was skim milk. It has calcium, protein, and 0% fat - healthy, right? Well, mostly right.

Vitamin D, the sunshine vitamin, can be hard to find in natural dietary sources. Those places you can find it, like some types of fatty fish or beef liver, also have a lot of fat. But one of the main sources of vitamin D for many people, especially in the winter, is in milk where it has been added. It makes sense to add vitamin D to milk because it helps with calcium absorption. And if you drink a delicious, refreshing glass of skim milk, which has 0% fat, or your pour some skim milk into your fat free cereal, or you get a latte made with skim milk, you're not able to absorb any of that good vitamin D that has been added to your milk for your health benefit!

This is why just about any dietitian that you talk to will likely recommend that you switch from skim to 1% milk unless you have a weight issue. If you often drink your milk with meals that contain fat, you can also stick with the skim stuff. But if you tend to consume your milk either on it's own or with a meal or snack that doesn't contain fat, the bottom line is: switch it up and treat yourself to 1% milk. After all those years of drinking skim, trust me, it'll taste decadent!

Clever companies use the science behind fat-soluble vitamins as a marketing tool. This salad dressing's label reads: "Naturally helps better absorb vitamins A&E from salad with the oils in [the dressing]"