21 Oct 2024
4 min read
by YINI Editorial team
Cardiovascular health Healthy Diets & Lifestyle

Could swapping meat with dairy products help protect heart health?

cardiovascular CVD dairy meat saturated fats SFA
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Latest research suggests the type of food saturated fats come from might alter how they affect our heart health. Swapping saturated fats from meat with those from dairy products may help lower cardiovascular risk, the evidence suggests.

Eating too much food high in saturated fats has long been associated with increased risk to the heart and blood vessels. But a recent study highlights that not all saturated fats behave the same way – the type of food they come from can make a big difference in how they affect heart health.

Researchers from the UK investigated whether replacing saturated fatty acids (SFAs) from different meat products with those from individual dairy foods could reduce the risk of cardiovascular events, with intriguing results (1).

Understanding saturated fatty acids and cardiovascular health

Dietary recommendations to reduce risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) include limiting SFAs to 10% of total energy intake and replacing meat consumption with other plant- and animal-based foods (2,3).

Previous modelling studies have shown a lower incidence of CVD when replacing SFAs from meat products with those from dairy foods (4,5). But scientists haven’t yet unravelled the associations between individual meat products or dairy foods and CVD risk.

With this in mind, researchers from the University of Reading in England looked into how replacing SFAs from meat products (including processed, red, and poultry) with those from individual dairy foods (milk, cheese, and yogurt) was associated with CVD in the UK population.

The researchers analysed data from over 21,000 participants, aged 40–79 years, who were part of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition-Norfolk (EPIC-Norfolk) study (6). Using food frequency questionnaires, they recorded dietary habits and followed participants for over two decades to track incidence of CVD, coronary artery disease (CAD), and stroke. Here’s what they found…

Swapping from meat to dairy foods may help reduce CVD risk

Results showed that overall, replacing 2.5% of daily energy intake from SFAs in meat with SFAs from dairy foods was associated with a significantly reduced risk of developing CVD. Specifically, replacing total meat SFAs with total dairy SFAs was associated with an 11% lower incidence of CVD and a 12% lower incidence of CAD. These results took other socio-demographic, lifestyle, cardio-metabolic, and dietary factors into account.

Replacing SFAs from red and processed meat may have the greatest CVD benefit

Analyses of individual meat products and dairy foods revealed significantly reduced CVD risks when replacing SFAs from red or processed meat with those from dairy foods.

So, replacing SFAs from processed meat with those from cheese was associated with a 23% lower incidence of CVD and coronary artery disease (CAD) and a 19% lower incidence of stroke, while replacement of SFAs from red meat with those from cheese was associated with a 14% lower incidence of CVD. Similarly, replacing SFAs from processed meat with those from milk was associated with a 16% lower incidence of CVD and a 17% lower incidence of CAD.

Replacing SFAs from poultry with those from dairy products was associated with an increased risk of CVD and stroke. However, the researchers urge caution in interpreting this result. The narrow range of poultry fat intake led to imprecise risk estimates, as indicated by the large confidence intervals, suggesting these findings cannot be generalized. Consequently, the study’s results do not align with previous research, which indicates that the intake of poultry meat and dairy products has a neutral effect on CVD risk.

Why does CVD risk change when replacing SFAs from meat with dairy?

The cause and underlying mechanisms of the changes seen in CVD risk when replacing SFAs from meat products with those from dairy foods remain unclear, but researchers propose several potentially contributing factors:

  • Different proportions of individual SFAs contained within meat and dairy foods may have a differential impact on CVD risk. For example, high concentrations of odd-chain fatty acids found in dairy foods have been linked with lower CVD risk.
  • Other constituents within meat (e.g., sodium, preservatives, and nitrates) and dairy matrices (e.g., protein, calcium, bacteria and the milk fat globule membrane) may also modulate the impact of SFAs on CVD risk.

The authors of this study suggest that future research should focus on the replacement of different types of red meat (unprocessed and processed) with different types of poultry and dairy foods to help specify food-based dietary recommendations for CVD prevention.

“Replacement of SFA from meat products, and especially processed meat, by dairy products may lower incidence of CVD and CAD. Our findings also add to the evidence that different types of meat (…) should be considered separately.”

Vogtschmidt YD, et al., 2024

References
  1. (1) Source: (1) Vogtschmidt YD, Soedamah-Muthu SS, Imamura F, Givens DI, Lovegrove JA. Replacement of Saturated Fatty Acids from Meat by Dairy Sources in Relation to Incident Cardiovascular Disease: The European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-Norfolk Study. Am J Clin Nutr. 2024 Jun;119(6):1495-1503. doi: 10.1016/j.ajcnut.2024.04.007. PMID: 38608753.
  2. (2) A.H. Lichtenstein, L.J. Appel, M. Vadiveloo, F.B. Hu, P.M. Kris-Etherton, C.M. Rebholz, et al., 2021 Dietary Guidance to improve cardiovascular health: a scientific statement from the American Heart Association, Circulation 144 (23) (2021) e472–e487
  3. (3) Food Standards Agency, The Eatwell Guide: helping you eat a healthy and balanced diet, Food Standards Agency, United Kingdom, 2020
  4. (4) M.C. de Oliveira Otto, D. Mozaffarian, D. Kromhout, A.G. Bertoni, C.T. Sibley, D.R. Jacobs Jr., et al., Dietary intake of saturated fat by food source and incident cardiovascular disease: the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 96 (2) (2012) 397–404,
  5. (5) L.E.T. Vissers, J. Rijksen, J.M.A. Boer, W.M.M. Verschuren, Y.T. van der Schouw, I. Sluijs, Fatty acids from dairy and meat and their association with risk of coronary heart disease, Eur. J. Nutr. 58 (7) (2019) 2639–2647
  6. (6) N.E. Day, S. Oakes, R.N. Luben, K.T. Khaw, S.A. Bingham, A.A. Welch, et al., EPIC-Norfolk: study design and characteristics of the cohort. European Prospective Investigation of Cancer, Br. J. Cancer. 80 (Suppl) (1999) 95–103