Last month, I commented on a blog post on the site Weight of the Evidence re high-fat foods that said:

Often the very foods we’re told to avoid or reduce significantly are often the ones that offer the higher levels of essential nutrients!

She used the example of cheese, and in the case of cheddar cheese, the low fat version had half of the vitamins that the fuller fat version had, for the sake of “65 calories.” (Though in hindsight, who eats just 1 oz of cheese?)

At first glimpse, this is compelling, which is one of the reasons I was quick to repost it. At the time, I had a bit of a twinge of doubt about this, but pushed it aside since for me, it’s all about nutrients.

Well, here we are, a month later, and Diet Blog has a similar post with the same example: cheese.

Now, I probably should have done a comprehensive study, but I figure one example suffices: yogurt. Consider the following, also from NutritionData.com (Diet Blog’s source).

Both are for plain yogurt; the one on the left is for whole milk yogurt, the one on the right is for skim milk yogurt.

The difference in calories is negligible, but the skim version has 5 more grams of protein, 8g less fat, and 50% more calcium (488mg for the skim compared to 296 for the whole milk version). Aside from vitamin A, the skim milk version is much more nutritious than the whole milk version.

Meat is another (IMO obvious) example of a food that does not carry the majority of its nutrients in its fat, so I’d expect lower-fat versions of beef, chicken, etc., to similarly give you more nutritional bang for the buck.

Like I said in the comments on Diet Blog, I think the real culprit here is processing, not fat content per se. When a low-fat food is simply the food less the fat, the nutritional profile is probably higher (save for fat soluble vitamins). But when companies have to add all sort of ingredients to make up for the missing bulk or flavor or mouth feel, it is those extra ingredients (and the volume they require) that depress the nutrient value.

Can anyone think of another food, besides cheese, that fits into this category?