Why 2% Milk is Really 35% Fat

 How much fat is there in 2% milk? The seemingly obvious answer is 2% right?

It’s not. It’s actually 35% fat as you can see from the Woojabooty Food Log snippet (pictured below) of 8 ounces of 2% milk.

How is that possible? Is it false advertising? False, no. Deceptive, perhaps.

Milk is made up of mostly water, which has no fat of calories.  Take out the water and the milk itself has a whopping 35% fat calories.

The 2% figure comes from calculating fat as a percentage of total weight. Since much of the weight comes from water, the 2% figure is correct if you’re looking at milk fat by weight.

Here’s another way to look at it. Let’s say you put 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a glass. Obviously, oil is 100% fat. Now add water to that glass. By adding water, you will increase the weight of the overall “food” but the percentage of fat in relation to the total weight goes down as you add more water. Still, the actual fat calories remain the same.

Fat is an important part of a balanced diet. The American Heart Association suggests that we consume 56 to 78 grams of fat each day (or 25 to 35% of your total calories). Go for “good fats” like nuts and avocado and limit your saturated fat intake to less than 16 grams and trans fats to less than two grams per day.

by Ruth Stoffel