Milk Fat Intake and Telomere Length in U.S. Women and Men: The Role of the Milk Fat Fraction

Table 5

Mean differences in the dietary covariates by level of milk fat consumed by U.S. adults.

	Level of milk fat typically consumed
Covariate	Abstainer; ()	Full-fat; ()	2%; ()	1%; ()	Nonfat; ()
Protein (g/kg)						12.2	<0.0001
Fat (% kcal)						28.9	<0.0001
Sat. fat (% kcal)						49.8	<0.0001
Fiber (g/1000 kcal)						64.1	<0.0001

SE is the standard error of the mean. Protein (g/kg) refers to grams of protein intake per kilogram body weight. Fat (% kcal) represents the percentage of total energy derived from dietary fat. Sat. Fat (% kcal) refers to the percentage of total energy derived from saturated fat. Fiber (g/1000 kcal) represents the number of grams of fiber consumed per day per 1000 kcal. The nonfat milk category also included skim milk and 0.5% milk. Means on each row were adjusted for differences in the demographic variables. ^a,b,c,dMeans on the same row with the same superscript letter are not statistically different (). On the row for fiber intake, the mean difference between abstainers and adults who drank 2% milk was borderline significant (). On the row for fat (% kcal), the difference between milk abstainers and those drinking nonfat milk was borderline significant (). The five levels of milk fat consumption were defined as follows: abstainer: participants who never consumed milk (, 14.0%); full-fat: adults who consumed full-fat milk (, 35.9%); 2%: subjects who usually consumed 2% milk (, 28.3%); 1%: individuals who consumed 1% milk (, 8.7%); and nonfat: participants who typically consumed nonfat, skim, or 0.5% milk (, 13.2%). The number of subjects in each category above does not take into account the sample weights assigned to each subject. However, the percentage (%) following the sample size shows the proportion of subjects in the milk fat category with the NHANES sample weights applied. The % values are more meaningful than the number of subjects () because the percentages represent the proportion of the U.S. adult population that fall within each milk fat category.