Another Study Calls Dairy Fats OK

Dan Dairy, Industry News Release

dairy fatsAnother study suggests that dairy fats do not increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes. The Study, published in the European Journal of Epidemiology, concluded that consumption of dairy fats had a “neutral” effect on human health. A researcher leading the study at England’s Reading University said: “There’s been a lot of publicity over the last five to ten years about how saturated fats increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and a belief has grown up that they must increase the risk, but they don’t.” The study combined other research projects from the last 35 years that involved more than 900,000 people. The study says no associations were found that led them to believe consumption of dairy fats led to increased risks of mortality or heart disease. The research instead suggested that fermented dairy products may actually lower the risk of having a heart attack or stroke. The study is one of many recent research projects that have determined dairy fats are good for humans, reversing previous thinking by the scientific community.

From the National Association of Farm Broadcasting news service.

From: European Journal of Epidemiology

Milk and dairy consumption and risk of cardiovascular diseases and all-cause mortality: dose–response meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies

  • Jing Guo
  • Arne Astrup
  • Julie A. Lovegrove
  • Lieke Gijsbers
  • David I. Givens
  • Sabita S. Soedamah-Muthu

Abstract

With a growing number of prospective cohort studies, an updated dose–response meta-analysis of milk and dairy products with all-cause mortality, coronary heart disease (CHD) or cardiovascular disease (CVD) have been conducted. PubMed, Embase and Scopus were searched for articles published up to September 2016. Random-effect meta-analyses with summarised dose–response data were performed for total (high-fat/low-fat) dairy, milk, fermented dairy, cheese and yogurt. Non-linear associations were investigated using the spine models and heterogeneity by subgroup analyses. A total of 29 cohort studies were available for meta-analysis, with 938,465 participants and 93,158 mortality, 28,419 CHD and 25,416 CVD cases. No associations were found for total (high-fat/low-fat) dairy, and milk with the health outcomes of mortality, CHD or CVD. Inverse associations were found between total fermented dairy (included sour milk products, cheese or yogurt; per 20 g/day) with mortality (RR 0.98, 95% CI 0.97–0.99; I2 = 94.4%) and CVD risk (RR 0.98, 95% CI 0.97–0.99; I2 = 87.5%). Further analyses of individual fermented dairy of cheese and yogurt showed cheese to have a 2% lower risk of CVD (RR 0.98, 95% CI 0.95–1.00; I2 = 82.6%) per 10 g/day, but not yogurt. All of these marginally inverse associations of totally fermented dairy and cheese were attenuated in sensitivity analyses by removing one large Swedish study. This meta-analysis combining data from 29 prospective cohort studies demonstrated neutral associations between dairy products and cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. For future studies it is important to investigate in more detail how dairy products can be replaced by other foods.

Read the full paper.

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