Scientists from Tsinghua University and elsewhere found that dairy foods are linked to a lower risk of diabetes.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, diabetes is a chronic (long-lasting) disease that affects how your body turns food into energy.
There are three main types of diabetes: type 1, type 2, and gestational diabetes (diabetes while pregnant). More than 122 million Americans are living with diabetes (37.3 million) or prediabetes (96 million).
With diabetes, your body doesn’t make enough insulin or can’t use it as well as it should. When there isn’t enough insulin or cells stop responding to insulin, too much blood sugar stays in your bloodstream.
Over time, that can cause serious health problems, such as heart disease, vision loss, and kidney disease.
Diet is closely related to the risk of diabetes. But the link between dairy food intake and the risk of diabetes is still unclear.
Dairy foods have been found to keep muscles, bones, nerves, teeth, skin, and vision healthy.
They can help reduce tiredness and fatigue and maintain healthy blood pressure. Dairy foods also support normal growth and brain development.
In the current study, researchers aimed to use data from the Chinese Health and Nutrition Survey to examine the association between dairy intake and diabetes.
The study included more than 15,000 adults. Their dairy intake was assessed by the 3-day 24-h recall and food record methods, and diabetes occurrence was from self-report.
The team found that 12,368 (80%) participants had no dairy intake while 2,179 (14%) and 947 (6%) consumed dairy at 0.1-100 and >100 g/day, respectively.
The researchers found dairy consumption of 0.1-100 g/day was associated with a lower risk of diabetes in all participants and males.
They also found the protective effect on diabetes was strong in dairy intake ranging from 25 to 65 g/day.
Consuming 30-80 g/day was linked to reduced diabetes risk among the ≤ 2,000 kcal/day energy intake group.
Based on the results, the team concludes that dairy intake is linked to reduced diabetes risk in Chinese adults.
Further research needs to examine the optimal level of dairy intake for preventing diabetes in the Chinese population.
The research was published in Frontiers in Nutrition and conducted by Yucheng Yang et al.
If you care about diabetes, please read studies that eating more eggs is linked to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, and people with a high intake of linoleic acid have a lower risk of type 2 diabetes.
For more information about nutrition, please see recent studies about unhealthy plant-based diets linked to metabolic syndrome, and results showing Mediterranean diet could help reduce the diabetes risk by 30%.
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