For decades, health authorities across Europe and North America have advised people to choose skimmed or low-fat milk, yoghurt and cheese over full-fat versions, largely because of the saturated fat they contain. A new clinical trial from the University of Toronto is now adding to a growing body of evidence that questions how strict that advice needs to be.
What the study found
The randomised trial, published in The Journal of Nutrition and reported by ScienceDaily, followed 74 adults with overweight or obesity for 12 weeks. Participants were split into three groups: a calorie-restricted diet low in dairy, an energy-neutral diet with three daily servings of full-fat dairy, and an unrestricted diet that also included three daily servings of full-fat dairy.
After 12 weeks, the researchers found no meaningful differences in weight gain, body composition, or cholesterol levels between people following the low-dairy diet and those eating three servings of dairy each day. Participants consuming more dairy, however, showed improvements in blood pressure and consumed more calcium, protein, and vitamin D, according to findings summarised by ScienceDaily.
“"Those that had three servings of dairy didn't have adverse levels of blood cholesterol or lipids or evidence of insulin resistance," says Harvey Anderson, a professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto's Temerty Faculty of Medicine, who led the study.”
Why this matters for European dietary advice
Guidance to limit saturated fat has long shaped official dietary advice in Europe. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) recommends keeping saturated fat intake as low as possible, and most EU member states promote reduced-fat dairy as part of that goal, a position rooted largely in nutrition research from the 1960s and 1970s linking saturated fat to raised cholesterol.
But researchers behind the new trial point to what is sometimes called the dairy matrix hypothesis, the idea that the physical structure of milk, cheese and yoghurt, including how fat, protein and calcium interact, may change how the body processes that fat, unlike saturated fat consumed in isolation. It remains a hypothesis rather than settled science, but it helps explain why full-fat dairy did not raise cholesterol in this trial the way a simple saturated-fat calculation might predict.
The finding also lands amid a broader shift in dietary guidance elsewhere. In the United States, the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans moved away from decades of low-fat dairy recommendations, a change the Toronto researchers say their trial helps support, according to reporting by Tech Times.
Caution before changing your shopping list
Nutrition specialists urge caution about applying the results too broadly. The trial involved only 74 adults aged 25 to 60 with overweight or obesity, and excluded people with cardiovascular disease, diabetes or existing high cholesterol, according to Medical Daily's review of the study. Anyone managing those conditions should discuss dairy choices with their own doctor rather than changing habits on the strength of one trial.
Still, for the general population, the study adds weight to a reassessment already under way among nutrition scientists: that full-fat dairy, eaten in moderate amounts, is unlikely to be the dietary hazard it was once assumed to be, and may bring nutritional benefits, such as higher vitamin D and calcium intake, that low-fat alternatives do not always match.
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