Is Fairlife Milk Healthy? Fairlife 2% Nutrition Facts and Ingredients

Fairlife 2% milk nutrition facts: is it healthy?

On Fairlife's label, one cup (240 ml) of the 2% milk has 120 calories, 4.5 g of fat, 3 g of saturated fat, 6 g of sugar and 13 g of protein. This page is for the 11.5 fl oz single bottle. Here is what that whole bottle holds, from the USDA label data:

The good part: a lot of protein for the calories, and half the sugar of regular milk. All of the sugar is the milk's own; nothing sweet is added. That is why the nutrition part of the score is high, at Nutri-Score A on our calculation. Nutri-Score is the A to E nutrition grade used on packs in Europe.

The thing to keep in mind is the saturated fat. It is 2% milk, so a cup has 3 g. If you want less, choose a lower fat milk.

What is Fairlife milk made of?

Fairlife is cow's milk that has been run through filters. In Fairlife's words, the milk flows through soft filters that concentrate the protein and calcium and filter out most of the sugar. The label lists 4 ingredients:

• Reduced fat ultra-filtered milk. the milk itself, with more protein and less milk sugar (lactose) than it started with.
• Lactase enzyme. breaks down the lactose that is left, which is why Fairlife sells the milk as lactose free.
• Vitamin A palmitate and vitamin D3. two added vitamins.

There are no thickeners, sweeteners, flavors or emulsifiers in the plain milk. The flavored Fairlife drinks and protein shakes are different products with longer ingredient lists, so scan those on their own.

Is Fairlife milk ultra-processed?

Not on our method. NOVA is the food-processing scale used in nutrition research. Group 1 covers foods that are only cleaned, split up, pasteurized or chilled, and the researchers who created NOVA list fractioning, which means splitting a food into its parts, among those group 1 steps (Monteiro et al., 2019). Ultra-filtration splits milk into its parts in that way. Nothing from the group 4 list is added: no flavors, sweeteners, emulsifiers or protein isolates.

So our method places this milk in NOVA group 1 and the processing part of the score is at the top. Not every database agrees: the Open Food Facts record for this bottle puts it in group 3, processed food. The word "ultra" in ultra-filtered refers to the fine filter, not to ultra-processing.

The difference matters. Large reviews of the research link diets high in ultra-processed food with higher risks of heart disease deaths and type 2 diabetes (Lane et al., BMJ, 2024). Those studies are observational. Plain filtered milk is not the kind of food they are about.

Is there a better milk?

Not one that scores clearly higher. Truvi's swap search found no milk in our US list with a complete label that beats a score of 97 by a clear margin, so we don't suggest a swap. Plain milk without added sugar or flavors scores near the top in general; the main difference with Fairlife is more protein and less sugar per cup.

Full ingredient list and nutrition

Reduced fat ultra-filtered milk, lactase enzyme, vitamin a palmitate, vitamin d3.

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