Are dairy products good for your cardiovascular health? What do research say?

Recent strong scientific evidence indicate that milk/dairy products, including those with higher fat content are associated either with a reduced or neutral risk of cardiovascular diseases.

Surprisingly, high saturated fat whole milk, yogurt, butter, and cheese are associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease including heart disease and stroke! These findings do not support a focus on low fat dairy food in dietary guidelines.

On the other hand, researchers from School of Public Health, Harvard University, in 2016, cautioned that dairy fat may not be an optimal type of fat in our diets, since swapping it with vegetable fats or polyunsaturated fats amounting to the same calories can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease by 10% and 24% respectively. In addition, replacing dairy fat with fats from red meat predicted 6% higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

Moderate consumption of a mix of both low fat(skim milk) and high fat (whole milk) dairy products is an option that you can choose for optimal cardiovascular health.