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Substantial evidence shows that a high intake of saturated fat in the diet has the potential to significantly raise LDL-C and ApoB-containing lipoproteins in many people, and in turn increase their risk of developing atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD).

However, people may raise what seems to some contradictory evidence, or what is sometimes thought of as a paradox: the impact of full-fat dairy on CVD risk.

This paradox arises because given the saturated fat content of full-fat milk, yogurt and cheese, we typically don’t see the same impact on blood lipid profiles. In addition, epidemiology can often show such foods in a favourable light. And the dairy fat story gets more interesting when we look at evidence showing there is a huge difference in the impact of consuming different dairy foods (e.g. butter vs cheese/yogurt).

So this leads to many questions that people rightly ask, which we aim to address in this episode. Questions such as:

Why doesn’t increased dairy consumption lead to same increases in CVD risk as other saturated fat sources?
Do results from full-fat dairy studies prove that saturated fat isn’t a problem?
What is it about cheese/yogurt that makes it different to butter?
How do low-fat and full-fat dairy compare?
Diets including/excluding dairy: how to compare?

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SNP16: A Dairy Fat Paradox? – Saturated Fat, Food Matrices & Heart Disease