An odd question. But it just might possibly be backed up by decent and disavowed research. If it is true, maybe Gabor Mate is in the right track when linking disease and emotion. And maybe scientists should go with the data, not their druthers. Clearly this calls out for further studies. Recruiting volunteers might be a problem?
Excerpt from above:
The status of dairy, in particular, was bogged down in simplistic and competing assumptions [in the 1980s]. “We just thought, Oh, you know, calcium and bones: It’s good for kids. But, oh, the saturated fat! Don’t eat too much dairy!”
Pereira and his co-authors tested these old ideas using data from a study, begun in 1985, that tracked the emergence of heart-disease risk factors in more than 5,000 young adults. After seeing the results, “we knew it was going to be very high-profile and controversial,” Pereira recalled. Pretty much across the board—low-fat, high-fat, milk, cheese—dairy foods appeared to help prevent overweight people from developing insulin-resistance syndrome, a precursor to diabetes.
According to the numbers, tucking into a “dairy-based dessert”—a category that included foods such as pudding but consisted, according to Pereira, mainly of ice cream—was associated for overweight people with dramatically reduced odds of developing insulin-resistance syndrome. It was by far the biggest effect seen in the study, 2.5 times the size of what they’d found for milk. “It was pretty astounding,” Pereira told me. “We thought a lot about it, because we thought, Could this actually be the case?”
There were reasons to be wary: The data set wasn’t huge, in epidemiological terms, and participants hadn’t reported eating that many dairy-based desserts, so the margin of error was wide. And given that the study’s overall message was sure to attract criticism—Pereira recalled getting “skewered” by antidairy activists—he had little desire to make a fuss about ice cream.
…the ice-cream finding: It seemed wrong. But the same paper had given them another result that they liked much better. The team was going all in on yogurt. With a growing reputation as a boon for microbiomes, yogurt was the anti-ice-cream—the healthy person’s dairy treat.
“Higher intake of yogurt is associated with a reduced risk” of type 2 diabetes, “whereas other dairy foods and consumption of total dairy are not,” the 2014 paper said. “The conclusions weren’t exactly accurately written,” acknowledged Dariush Mozaffarian, the dean of policy at Tufts’s nutrition school and a co-author of the paper, when he revisited the data with me in an interview. “Saying no foods were associated—ice cream was associated.”…
[Another study replicated the finding ice cream led to a significant drop in insulin resistance, but the authors did not believe or want to publicize the result although no errors were found in the data.]
Another study.
In models adjusting for sociodemographic, lifestyle and dietary factors, a higher intake of high-fat yogurt was associated with lower prediabetes risk (HRQ4vsQ1 0.70, 95% CI 0.54-0.91 and HRserving/day 0.67, 0.51-0.89). In addition, a higher intake of high-fat milk was associated with lower prediabetes risk (HRQ4vsQ1 0.81, 0.67-0.97, HRserving/day 0.88, 0.79-0.99). Associations were found for low-fat dairy, low-fat milk and total cheese with a higher prediabetes risk (HRserving/day ranging from 1.05-1.07, not significant in quartiles). Associations with longitudinal HOMA-IR were similar to prediabetes for high-fat yogurt, low-fat dairy and low-fat milk. Fermented dairy, low-fat yogurt, high-fat cheese, cream and ice cream were not associated with the outcomes. In conclusion, a higher intake of high-fat yogurt was associated with a lower prediabetes risk and lower longitudinal insulin resistance. Additionally, high-fat milk was associated with a lower prediabetes risk.
When someone starts telling me that “Scientists don’t want you to know!”, I start getting skeptical. If the data really did support dairy desserts being good for presenting diabetes, then the scientists would report that, and other scientists would read those papers and test it further, and it would become established scientific knowledge. There’s no anti-ice-cream bias out there. Heck, we scientists like ice cream, too.
One trouble, in my mind, with these kinds of studies is when they have no idea of the mechanism behind the effect, so it’s really post hoc reasoning. They need more research to find at least what components of butterfat have this effect. That would probably not be easy to do, however.
According to Wikipedia, there are different kinds of fat contained in butterfat (the fat that is in ice cream and full fat yogurt), including saturated fats, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, and even a little trans fat. One saturated fat and one monounsaturated fat account for 55% of butterfat. If (for example) the monounsaturated fats are the ones that have this beneficial effect, it might be possible to consume the beneficial component and avoid the damaging ones.
However, I’m going to take this to mean that I can put butter on my bread again.
Your skepticism is appropriate. One would think the industry would be eager to support studies. But looking at PubMed suggests both very few studies and the positive associations reported.
I question this. All dairy that is not non- or low-fat has a very bad reputation in the health beliefs of many people.
A couple of weeks ago I found an ice cream that was full fat but had no added sugar. Sounds like it should be ideal for fat pre-diabetics like me. That is, I might not get diabetes, but my heart may not like it so much.
This reminds me of a classic moment from Woody Allen’s “Sleeper”, in which he wakes up several hundred years after being in a coma:
I’m going to check with my doctor and health insurance if an Rx for Ben&Jerry’s will be covered.
I don’t know about these studies, but the chocolate chip ice cream sandwiches from Trader Joe’s have a devastating effect on my fasting blood sugar.
Yeah. Sadly, “Preventing metabolic syndrome leading towards later diabetes” and “Dessert both my near-dead pancreas and my tongue can withstand” seem to be two very different propositions.
I find that “Cheese and crackers, hold the crackers” makes a diabetic-compatible dessert. So does booze if you leave out the sweet mixers. Not much else does.
Nutritionists generally seem to sing from the same songbook. But the idea full-fat dairy is healthy, not harmful seems to have become mainstream. (In the article, but oddly not its summary.)
I could picture ice cream being healthy if the sugar were cut in half, there were some sort of metamucil-fiber or whatnot thrown in, lots of cinnamon added in, and walnuts or whatnot, so that it would slow down the glycemic index.
Oh, and also, making the ice cream so hard to dig out of the carton that you burn more calories digging it out than ingesting it.
If I could ever eat more than 2 spoonfuls I’d let you test me.
Or pudding.
Or anything “good”.
Alas, I’d be dead in a week. I guess I’m not the right test subject.
Yeah. The quart container. It’s a “single serving” right? Right? (I could Ice Cream every day, and never get tired of it.)
I’m eager to participate in the advancement of science by eating ice cream. Is sushi correlated with any health benefits?