Do the forbidden dairy products hold the key to cutting diabetes risk ?

Would you consider full fat dairy products a good health choice ? Probably not, we have been conditioned to believe that limiting full fat dairy is the way to go to protect against lifestyle disease.

A study coming out of Harvard School of Public Health knocks the socks off two big health paradigms

the low fat is the key to diabetes free living
trans-fats are evil personified

The rock the boat discovery centres around a trans-fat known as trans-palmitoelic acid or trans-palmitoleate

Trans-palmitoelic acid

You don’t make it but it occurs in abundance in the fat component of milk. So the forbidden dairy products including full cream milk, cheese and butter would all be good sources of the stuff.

So how is that a forbidden food is now the exlir of diabetes free living.

The trans-palmitoelic acid surprise

The researchers have been observing 3 736 people since 1992 as part of a cardiovascular health study. In 1992, no one participating in the study had diabetes. Blood samples were taken and stored. In the intervening years, the researchers have kept tabs on the health status of the people who enrolled in the study.

Now nearly 20 years later, researchers are looking carefully at those blood samples. They checked the samples for all the usual things

Blood cholesterol
Inflammatory markers
Insulin levels

And trans-palmitoelic acid.

The trans-palmitoelic acid finding rocked the boat.

Those people with high circulating levels had a lower risk of developing diabetes.

Are we talking about a 5 % reduction or maybe a 10 % reduction ? These numbers would be significant but not earth shattering. No the figure is in the outer stratosphere – their risk of diabetes was 60 % less.

The biology underpinning the trans-palmitoelic effect is unknown.

But it isn’t the first hint that dairy consumption is not the big no no for health. In fact, a growing body of epidemiological evidence suggests that people who eat a dairy rich diet are less likely to develop type II diabetes and other metabolic disorders.

So next time you order a fancy coffee – don’t settle for the fake low fat skinny cappuccino, have the real thing with extra cream. You want to shoot your trans-palmitoelic acid levels sky high and protect yourself from diabetes.

NOTE : Just remember to factor in the overall calories. Weight management 101 – too many calories in will make you a hefa-lump.

Trans-Palmitoleic Acid, Metabolic Risk Factors, and New-Onset Diabetes in U.S. Adults. Annals of Internal Medicine, (2010) 153(12): 790-799; Dariush Mozaffarian, Haiming Cao, Irena B. King, Rozenn N. Lemaitre, Xiaoling Song, David S. Siscovick, and Gökhan S. Hotamisligil