Nutritional Benefits Of Organic Milk

I'm Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

Over the last eighteen months WSU researchers conducted the first large scale study of organic and conventional milk nationwide, testing and comparing the nutritional benefits of both in nearly 400 samples. Charles Benbrook, WSU researcher and the study's lead author, says they were surprised by the large number of nutritional quality differences that his research team documented during the study, one of those being a far healthier ratio of fatty acids in organic milk.

BENBROOK: In fact, organic milk is 2.5 fold better than conventional milk in terms of its content of health promoting fatty acids. We're learning now that not all fat is the same, and while all Americans need to watch their overall fat intake it's perhaps even more important to seek out and assure that a person includes the right kind of fats in their diet. And without a doubt we need fewer Omega 6 fatty acids and we need more of these Omega 3 fatty acids that are high in milk, and especially organic milk.

Benbrook explains perhaps one of the reasons why organic milk has this healthy profile of fatty acids.

BENBROOK: The national organic program rule that all organic farmers must follow requires organic dairy farmers to graze their cattle for 125 days per year and assure that pasture provides a significant share of their daily dry matter intake.

WSU researchers also compared the the fatty acids in dairy to those found in fish and were surprised to find that recommended intakes of full-fat milk products supply far more of the major omega-3 fatty acid, ALA, than recommended servings of fish, with conventional milk having roughly nine times more ALA than fish, and organic milk having 14 times more.

That's Washington Ag Today.

I'm Lacy Gray on the Ag Information Network.