In this 2025 YouTube presentation, the creator challenges the common belief that dairy’s saturated fat makes it harmful for the heart. He reviews a new large‑scale study that combined data from the UK Biobank (≈900,000 participants, ~9 million person‑years) and a Chinese cohort, plus a meta‑analysis of prior research. The UK data showed a 7 % lower risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and a 14 % lower risk of ischemic stroke with higher total dairy intake, while the Chinese data showed no CVD benefit and a modest 9 % higher coronary heart disease risk but a 6 % lower stroke risk. The presenter explains possible reasons for the discrepancy: much higher dairy consumption in the UK and genetic differences. He then breaks down effects by dairy type: cheese consumption (≥7 times/week) was linked to a 12 % lower CVD risk; both soft (e.g., brie) and hard (e.g., Parmesan) cheeses, as well as high‑fat cheeses, showed protective associations. Milk showed a uniform ~7‑9 % risk reduction across whole, semi‑skimmed, and skimmed varieties, with the abstract only highlighting low‑fat milk due to a borderline confidence‑interval for whole milk. The meta‑analysis reported a modest overall inverse association (risk ratio 0.963) and a 2 % lower CVD risk per additional daily dairy serving, with the strongest benefits for cheese and fermented dairy, weaker for yogurt and milk, and none for ice cream. The speaker stresses that these are observational associations, not proof of causation, but they counter the prevailing dairy stigma. He concludes that full‑fat dairy—especially cheese—can be a healthful source of protein, calcium, vitamin K2, odd‑chain saturated fats, and probiotics, supporting stable blood sugar and vascular health. Finally, he warns about A1 versus A2 casein: many people (including himself) are sensitive to A1, which can generate beta‑casomorphin‑7 and cause gastrointestinal distress; thus he recommends A2‑only dairy from sheep, goat, or buffalo (e.g., Roquefort, Manchego, buffalo mozzarella). The talk blends data summary, personal opinion, humor, and practical dietary advice.
Chapters
Holy cow! Cheese may actually cut cardiovascular disease risk. Let's dig into it. Now, many health experts are currently down on dairy, given its high saturated fat content. After coconut, dairy has among the highest percent fat as saturated fat of any food, even more than beef, bacon, or eggs. And this has contributed to dairy's Münster status, with respect to heart health. But I want to bust that myth with new data. In this new 2025 study, researchers looked at the association between dairy consumption and incidence of new cardiovascular disease in a Chinese cohort and the UK Biobank, and complemented these analyses with another meta-analysis of the existing studies. And in a sentence quoting from the paper, they found that dairy consumption is associated with a 3.7% reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and a 6% reduced risk of stroke. So cheese lovers, rejoice! But if the data read as straightforward as that, as all dairy did X in all populations all the time, well, this video wouldn't brie as long as it is, which would be a shame as I wouldn't have the chance to churn out all these puns. But seriously, in this video, I'm going to break down these data, then give you my overall opinion on whether dairy is healthy—spoiler alert, it is—and I'm going to give you as well one often overlooked caution about cheese selection that I use in my everyday life. But first, I want to give you a high-level overview of the methods and the findings behind this new research. So in this study, they followed about 900,000 participants from the UK Biobank and a Chinese cohort, and they followed them for a cumulative about 9 million person-years to evaluate the associations of dairy consumption and consumption of particular types of dairy with the incidence of cardiovascular disease and stroke. And here's what they found by cohort, starting with the UK Biobank cohort. In the UK cohort, they found total dairy intake was associated with a 7% lower rate, or 7% lower risk, of new cardiovascular disease and a 14% lower risk of ischemic stroke. However, and interestingly, in the Chinese cohort, they found no association with with cardiovascular disease and dairy intake after a multivariable analysis, and actually a 9% increased risk of coronary heart disease, but a 6% lower risk of stroke. So bottom line, the relationships in these two cohorts both suggested a lower risk of stroke with more dairy consumption— total dairy consumption. But in the UK cohort, total dairy consumption was also associated with lower cardiovascular disease risk, In the Chinese cohort, if anything, there was a positive association, although it's not really clear. This is kind of weird, right? Why would it affect those two cohorts differently? Now, it's not fully explained why this was the case in the study, but there are at least two possibilities. First, the average intake of total dairy products in the UK population was more than 4 times higher than the Chinese cohort. So it's possible that the cardiometabolic benefits of dairy consumption may require relatively high levels of intake. You need to eat more cheese to get the benefits. And as an aside, I love this interpretation by the authors because I love cheese. But second, genetic differences between the populations may play a role. In other words, there may be something about the genetics of people in the UK that allow them to benefit more from dairy as compared to the population in China as a whole population, acknowledging there's a lot of heterogeneity within populations. And as you can imagine, another complicating factor is that there are a lot of different types of dairy. So what the researchers then did, to their credit, is a breakdown based on dairy types. And this is what they found. They found that cheese consumption was associated with lower cardiovascular disease risk, with a 12% decreased risk among those who consumed cheese at least 7 times per week—that's a serving of cheese per day at least—compared to those consuming cheese less than 2 times per week. So who knew your heart and cheese could be such brie-lliant friends? Brie-lliant friends. That was a hard punt to hit. Anyway, speaking of brie, they also found a protective association for both softer fresh cheeses, like brie, and hard cheeses like a Parmesan or a Pecorino Romano. And they also found a protective association between high-fat cheeses, at least 1 serving every other day, and cardiovascular disease. So quoting from the paper, "Although cheese, especially hard cheese, is rich in salt and saturated fat and calories, ugh, we still detected a "protective relationship for hard cheeses and high-fat cheeses with respect to cardiovascular disease." What a paradox, right? You can tell I'm being sarcastic. And in case you couldn't have guessed it, there were no protective cardiovascular effects noted for ice cream. I know what you're thinking, "Ah, no way!" In terms of milk— I'm sorry, I'm cracking myself up here. In terms of milk, there also appeared to be a generally protective effect of milk. Although I'll note in the abstract of the paper, if you read it, it actually specifies that semi-skimmed and skim milk, so the low-fat milks, contributed to reduced cardiovascular disease risk, which appears to suggest that whole milk was not protective. Here's where I'm going to delve into a little bit of nuance. This was actually a statistical quirk, because if you look at the data, you'll see the numbers for semi-skimmed and skimmed milk, and whole milk are all nearly identical. I'm gonna note these numbers with a little bit of mathematical and scientific jargon for a moment, and then I'll give you the simple takeaway. All types of milk had hazard ratios for cardiovascular disease risk of 0.19 to 0.93, meaning about a 7 to 9% reduced risk of cardiovascular disease with more milk consumption. And the only reason whole milk was excluded from the abstract is because the 95% confidence interval upper bound for whole milk was 1.00 versus that for skimmed or semi-skimmed milk, which had an upper bound of 0.98. So for the non-statistically minded, it's basically that the confidence interval for the whole milk finding fell exactly on the arbitrary threshold, whereas the statistics for non-whole milk fell just to the side of favorable. —even though in real life they all look the same. So, in my opinion, yes, whole milk, the same as semi-skimmed or skimmed, is probably cardiovascular protective. At least that's what the association shows. Now, I mentioned at the beginning they also did a meta-analysis of all the previously published studies. And therein, they found a small but inverse association between total dairy intake and incidence cardiovascular disease. With a risk ratio of 0.963, basically slightly lower cardiovascular disease risk. And they found that for each serving per day increment of total dairy, there was a 2% lower risk of cardiovascular disease. And I do say total dairy, so that includes ice cream, milk, cheese, yogurt. Now, for me, that's awesome since with the amount of cheese I eat, I think my cardiovascular disease is probably chopped down by like 50%. So yeah, that's 25 servings of cheese per day, probably about accurate. And looking at all the data for cardiovascular disease risk, they found the strongest associations, protective associations, for cheese and fermented dairy, things like kefir, with weaker associations for yogurt and milk. However, it's also very important to note that across the studies there was a lot of heterogeneity which is largely attributable to heterogeneity in some types of dairy. Simply put, different forms of dairy likely have different health impacts. And even within a category, remember I said yogurt earlier? Not all yogurts are the same. Some yogurts are like a nice full-fat, high-protein Greek yogurt. Other yogurts are filled with sugar and artificial sweeteners. And this is also probably why there was no protective effect noted for yogurt overall. Since so much of the yogurt food supply has added sugar and artificial sweeteners, offsetting what would otherwise be healthy protective effects for a "real" yogurt like a full-fat healthy Greek yogurt. Kinda sneaky, right? OK, with all that, let's synthesize. Like all nutritional epidemiology, these are associations, and these data do not, do not prove causation. However, they do combat the stigma against dairy, especially cheese, since they document generally beneficial, healthy relationships between higher cheese and dairy intake and good cardiovascular health. And I'll emphasize again if it's not clear, I'm not trying to apply double standards here, as I have my qualms with the use of nutritional epidemiology being used to vilify healthy whole foods, like dairy and red meat. However, when even the large-scale hypothesis-generating nutritional epidemiology studies fail to toss cheese, or meat, or eggs under the bus, and even report actually a good association between higher cheese intake and better cardiovascular health, well, I guess you could say this paper was like a cheese in a mousetrap. And guess what? Squeak. So in summary, dairy, including full-fat dairy, and especially cheese, is a health food. It can be a great source of protein, calcium, vitamins like K2, odd-chain saturated fats like C15—you can see this video for more—and probiotics. Full-fat dairy can also maintain healthy, stable blood sugar, which can promote maintenance of a healthy weight, and good blood sugar is generally good for vascular health. So overall, cheese good. But before I close, I want to issue one word of caution about A1 versus A2 dairy. The A1 and A2 refer to different forms of the casein protein found in dairy, and it's very common to have an intolerance to A1 casein but not A2 casein. This is highly relevant because most cow dairy has A1 casein, but dairy from sheep, goat, and buffalo is always A2 with no A1 casein. Now, why is this important? Well, the A1 casein protein can be broken down in the body into a compound called beta-casomorphin-7, which activates the mu opioid receptor and can cause gastrointestinal upset, including diarrhea and abdominal pain. So it's worth considering if you may be A1 sensitive. I certainly am A1 casein sensitive, and it's why I almost exclusively eat sheep, goat, and buffalo dairy. My favorites for taste and health are Roquefort, Manchego, and Pecorino, which are all sheep, goat cheese, and buffalo mozzarella, especially with a good extra virgin olive oil. That said, I enjoy these to my heart's content. See what I did there? Anyway, with that, stay curious and I'll see you in the next one.
