An international team of scientists studied the dairy fat consumption of 4,150 60-year-olds in Sweden — a country with one of the world’s highest levels of dairy production and consumption — by measuring blood levels of a particular fatty acid that is mostly found in dairy foods. Experts then followed the cohort for an average of 16 years to observe how many had heart attacks, strokes and other serious circulatory events, and how many of them died.

After statistically adjusting for other known cardiovascular disease risk factors including age, income, lifestyle, dietary habits and other diseases, researchers found that those with high levels of the fatty acid — indicative of a high intake of dairy fats — had the lowest risk of cardiovascular disease, as well as no increased risk of death from all causes.

Alice Lichtenstein, director and senior scientist at Tufts University’s Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory, told CNN that her biggest concern was that the study results could be interpreted to suggest that all full-fat dairy products will reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, adding: “the bulk of the data do not support consuming full fat dairy products to reduce CVD risk.”

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