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Say cheese: saturated fat in dairy may protect against diabetes

The saturated fat in dairy products is now said to be not bad for health and may even protect against type 2 diabetes. Photograph by: dream79 , Fotolia.com

For cheese lovers it will be news worth celebrating with an extra-thick slice of comte.

The saturated fat in dairy products is now said to be not bad for health and may even protect against type 2 diabetes.

Cambridge University and the Medical Research Council studied the diets of more than 340,000 people to see if there was a link between saturated fat and the development of diabetes.

They found that while red meat, fried food, alcohol and carbohydrates appeared to have an impact on the development of type 2 diabetes, dairy foods seemed to protect against the disease.

“Our findings provide strong evidence that individual saturated fatty acids are not all the same,” said Dr Nita Forouhi, the lead researcher from the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit at Cambridge University. “The challenge we face now is to work out how the levels of these fatty acids in our blood correspond to the different foods we eat.”

Saturated fat is typically found in fatty animal products such as butter, cheese and red meat. It is generally considered unhealthy and is linked to high levels of cholesterol, as well as type 2 diabetes.

Different types of saturated fat can be spotted in the body by looking for chain-like saturated fatty acid molecules which contain either an odd or even number of carbon atoms.

Molecules with odd numbers of carbon atoms – 15 and 17 – which are associated with eating dairy products such as yogurt, cheese or milk, appeared to have a protective effect. Those with an even number – 14, 16 and 18 – were associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease affecting almost three million people in the UK. Dr Forouhi added: “These odd-chain saturated fatty acids are well-established markers of eating dairy fats, which is consistent with several recent studies, including our own, that have indicated a protective effect against type 2 diabetes from eating yogurt and other dairy products.”

She said that the “even-chain” saturated fatty acids could be made within the body through a process stimulated by carbohydrates and alcohol, as well as being consumed through fatty diets.

The study, which was funded by the European Commission, investigated the relationship between blood levels of nine saturated fatty acids and the risk of type 2 diabetes. Researchers looked at 12,403 people who developed the disease from a population of more than 340,000 from eight European countries.

The findings appear in the journal The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology.

Prof Nick Wareham, chief coordinator of the InterAct project to identify genetic and lifestyle diabetes risk factors, said: “We can place a lot of confidence in these findings.”

However, health experts cautioned against adding more dairy fat into diets.

Prof Keith Frayn, emeritus professor of human metabolism at the University of Oxford, said: “Higher levels of these particular fatty acids have long been known to be protective against heart attack, and here the authors show protection against diabetes development.

“But these results do not say that it would therefore be beneficial to ingest these particular fatty acids: it is quite possible, indeed probable, that these are simply markers of a particular dietary pattern that may involve other factors.”

(T1, D1)
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