Dairy is good for us

Dairy consumption coming out of the closet!

For many years Heart Foundations and Associations have been strongly recommending their patients eat a low fat diet, and the current American Heart Association recommends "fat-free and low-fat dairy products as part of healthy eating pattern".

A recent study published in the September 11 online Lancet medical journal has thrown considerable doubt on this. The PURE study looked at over 136,000 adults in 21 countries (both rural and urban) and followed them for nine years, showed that those who ate two or more servings of whole fat dairy products per day at a lower rate of cardiovascular disease, mortality and total mortality than those who did not. The incidence of stroke was also halved in those individuals who consumed dairy products.
Previous studies have also demonstrated the positive benefits of dairy products, most have been conducted in North America and Europe, and this study coordinated from Canada has suggested that we should be taking a very different approach to dairy products, and probably saturated fats.
There is quite a strong emphasis around the world to reduce sugar intake which is leading to the epidemic of obesity, and the only way to do this is to replace the sugar with fats. The study confirms that doing so is highly unlikely to do anything other than good!
It also means that diets such as the Paleo and ketogenic diet are a great deal safer and in fact more beneficial than the conventional authorities have recommended in the past.

I suspect in the not too distant future the guidelines on fat intake will be making a significant U-turn.