This Month's Topic:
Healthy Weight with Dairy
Dr. Michael Zemel

Dr. Michael Zemel, professor and Department of Nutrition director at the University of Tennessee, is also the author of The Calcium Key. This newly-released book explains his exciting research on the dairy and calcium-weight loss connection and translates it into practical advice for consumers. We recently talked to Dr. Zemel about the hows and whys of eating a dairy-rich diet for a healthy weight.

Your new book, The Calcium Key, outlines an exciting approach to weight loss. What's the main part of the plan?

The book focuses on the benefits of adding calcium-rich dairy foods to weight management diets, because my research shows that including 3-4 servings of milk, cheese or yogurt each day as part of a calorie-restricted diet can significantly increase your diet's effectiveness. It's a positive message about adding something for its health benefits, as opposed to following a more restrictive approach that focuses on taking things away.

How does calcium work to help the body achieve or maintain a healthy weight?

Instead of something that you want to get rid of, think of fat as a group of living cells that store fat and make fat. We want to break down more than we store. When we don't get enough calcium from our diet, we activate a hormone called calcitriol that signals our fat cells to make more fat and to breakdown less fat. The result is bigger, fatter, fat cells. Unfortunately, lots of big, fat cells, makes for an overweight or obese person. When we go on a high-calcium diet, we make less of this hormone. Now our fat cells make less fat and burn more fat. We have leaner, meaner fat cells.

Your research shows that The Calcium Key diet can actually help you keep more muscle? How?

It turns out that when you restrict calories and include three or more servings of dairy in your daily diet, more of your weight loss comes from fat instead of both muscle and fat. This is what we want. The reason is that dairy foods - milk, cheese and yogurt - provide more than calcium. They also provide other nutrients and active compounds, similar to phytochemicals we hear about in plant foods, that are beneficial for health. Some of these compounds work with the calcium to shift energy metabolism away from fat towards muscle. It's an exciting finding.

Does calcium from supplements provide the same results?

No. It's not just calcium; it's dairy. It turns out that dairy foods contain other substances that act with the calcium to increase of the fat burning effect. Dairy foods are about twice as effective as calcium supplements or calcium-fortified foods in helping prevent obesity and manage weight.

How many servings of dairy foods do you recommend? Is it just certain dairy foods or all dairy foods?

For adults, this program recommends three to four servings of dairy - an 8-ounce cup of milk, an 8-ounce cup of yogurt or 1 1/2 ounces of hard cheese. While you can certainly eat other dairy foods while following this diet, they don't count as one of your daily dairy servings. You also just need to make sure to count the calories.

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