 When people ask me if food is healthy or not, my response is compared to what? So when studies show cheese as a neutral or beneficial effect on health, that's the question I sought to answer. In a series of videos I did about saturated fat, I talked about a major campaign launched by the global dairy industry to neutralize the negative image of milk fat among regulators and health professionals as related to heart disease. That campaign continues to this day, with a publication of a meta-analysis demonstrating neutral, meaning non-harmful associations, between dairy products and cardiovascular disease and death. Okay, well, first of all, how do we know the dairy industry had anything to do with this study? Well, it was published in a journal that forces authors to disclose financial conflicts of interest. Let's see what they divulged. Dairy, dairy, dairy, dairy, dairy, dairy, the fourth largest dairy company in the world, dairy, dairy, milk, beer, soda, McDonald's, dairy, dairy, dairy, dairy. Oh, and the study itself was explicitly funded by dairy, dairy, dairy. Okay, then. The other big new one was this, suggesting that a little bit of cheese every day isn't just neutral, but actually good for you. And they make it clear that they have no conflicts of interest. They're just employees of the Yealy Innovation Center and the Yealy R&D Center. You know, China's largest dairy producer, making it one of the world's largest dairy companies? Okay, but how can cheese consumption be associated with better health outcomes? Well, most of these studies were from Europe, where cheese consumption is associated with a higher socioeconomic status. See, in Europe they're not eating cheese whiz and velvita. Cheese is generally an expensive product, and so who eats cheese? Those with higher paying jobs, higher socioeconomic strata, higher education levels, all of which are associated with better health outcomes, which may have nothing to do with their cheese consumption. Higher socioeconomic groups also consume more fruits and vegetables and more candies. So I bet you could do a population study and show candy consumption is associated with better health. Don't tell the National Confections Association. Too late, did you know that candy consumers have lower levels of inflammation? A 14% decreased risk of elevated blood pressure brought to you by the candy industry and the USDA, our government which props up the sugar industry to the tune of a billion dollars a year. It's like when our tax dollars are used to buy up surplus cheese. Paul Shapiro wrote a great editorial. Imagine the headline, government buys 20 million in surplus Pepsi or hard-earned tax dollars buying up millions of unwanted cola cans, all as a favor to the flailing soda industry, which just kept producing drinks no one wanted. As outrageous as such a government hand out to the soda industry would be, that's exactly what the USDA is doing for the dairy industry. Michelle Simon did a great report on how her government colludes with the industry to promote dairy junk foods. The federal government administers check-off programs to promote milk and dairy. McDonald's has six dedicated dairy check-off program employees at its corporate headquarters to try to squeeze in more cheese. That's how we got double steak quesadillas. That's how we got three cheese stuffed crust pizza complete with a summer of cheese. These funds are being used to promote foods that contribute to the very diseases our federal government is allegedly trying to prevent. Does it make sense to tell Americans to avoid foods high in salt, sugar, and saturated fat while engaging in the promotion of those same foods? Look, the meat and dairy industries can do what they like with their own money, but the public power of taxation should be used for the public good, not to support the dairy and candy industries. When industry-funded studies suggest their products have neutral health effects or even beneficial, one question you always have to ask is, compared to what? Is cheese healthy? Compared to what? And if you're sitting down to make a sandwich, cheese is probably healthy compared to bologna, but compared to peanut butter? No way. That's the point. Well, will it made a former chair of nutrition at Harvard to conclude that dairy foods are neutral? It could be misleading as it could be misinterpreted to mean the increase in consumption of dairy foods would have no effects on cardiovascular disease or mortality. Lost is that the health effects of increasing or decreasing consumption of dairy foods would depend, importantly, on the specific foods that are substituted for dairy foods. Like, what are you going to put on your salad? Cheese would be healthy compared to bacon, but not compared to nuts. See, consumption of nuts or plant protein has been found to be protectively associated with the risk of coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes in contrast and take up red meat, for example, has been associated with increased risk. Thus, it's reasonable to assume that the lack of association with dairy foods could put them somewhere in the middle of a spectrum of healthfulness, but certainly not an optimal source of energy or protein. More broadly, the available evidence supports policies that limit dairy production and encourages production of healthier sources of proteins and fats. He wasn't just speculating. This was based on three famous Harvard studies involving hundreds of thousands of men and women exceeding 5 million person years of follow-up. This was really the first large-scale perspective study to examine dairy fat intake compared to other types of fat in relation to heart attack and stroke risk. So replacing like 100 calories of fat worth of cheese with 100 calories of fat worth of peanut butter on a daily basis might reduce risk up to 24%, where a substitution with other animal fats might make things worse. Here's how it breaks down for heart disease. Swapping dairy fat for like vegetable oil would be associated with a decrease in disease risk, where swapping dairy for meat increases risk. Dairy fat calories may be as bad or worse as straight sugar. The lowest risk would entail swapping to a whole-plant food like whole grains. Yeah, dairy products are a major contributor to the saturated fat in the diet, and have thus been targeted as one of the main dietary causes of the number one killer of men and women. But the dairy industry likes to argue there are other things in dairy products, like fermentation byproducts and cheese, that could counteract the saturated fat effects. All part of an explicit campaign by the dairy industry to neutralize the negative image of milk fat among regulators and health professionals. If global dairy platform looks familiar, they were one of the funders of the milk and dairy's neutral study. Trotting out their dairy fat is counteracted, notion to which the American Heart Association responds that no information from controlled study supports the assertion that fermentation has beneficial nutrients to cheese that somehow counteract the harmful effects of the saturated fat. We need to cut down on dairy, meat, coconut oil, no matter what their respective industries say. In fact, that's the reason the American Heart Association felt they needed to release this special Presidential Advisory in 2017. They wanted to set the record straight on why well-conducted scientific research overwhelmingly supports limiting saturated fat in the diet.