A recent article on Time.com makes the case for whole milk, cheese and other dairy products while spotlighting the unintended consequences of the “war on fat” for the past few decades. The story highlighted new research that people who ate more full-fat dairy foods had a 46% lower risk of type 2 diabetes than those who ate less.

An exploration of the links between full-fat dairy consumption and diabetes incidence was conducted by researchers from Harvard and Tufts University and was published in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association. The study analyzed the blood of 3,333 adults enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, finding that higher plasma dairy fatty acid concentrations were associated with lower diabetes incidence.¹  Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a study author, was quoted in the Time.com article suggesting that the findings of this and other studies call for changing the policy of recommending consumption of only low-fat dairy product options.

The Time.com article also featured further positive evidence from another recent study published in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. This prospective cohort study found that among a population of more than 18,000 women in the Women’s Health Study, those who consumed higher amounts of full-fat dairy products lowered their risk for obesity by 8%.²

While more research is needed, these studies add to the growing body of evidence on the potential positive health effects of dairy fat, reinforcing that full-fat dairy can have a place in a healthful daily diet.

¹ Yakoob MY, Shi P, Willett WC, et al. Circulating Biomarkers of Dairy Fat and Risk of Incident Diabetes Mellitus Among US Men and Women in Two Large Prospective Cohorts. Circulation. 2016;133(12). doi:10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.115.018410