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U.S. researchers are calling for a reassessment of dietary advice on full-fat dairy. They found that unprocessed red meat has a minimal impact on health, while cheese and fish play an important role in a heart-healthy diet.
Essential Foods for Your Diet
The team identified full-fat dairy as one of six “key” foods that can help reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Fish, nuts, legumes, and vegetables rounded out the list after a large-scale analysis of nearly 250,000 participants.
Red meat has been linked to cancer and heart disease in some studies, but this analysis suggests unprocessed red meat can be part of a healthy diet when eaten in moderation. Processed meats like bacon and sausages, however, remain a different category.
The findings were validated across five major independent studies in about 70 countries. The researchers describe an optimal healthy—or “clean”—diet as including 3–4 servings of legumes, 7 servings of nuts, 2–3 servings of fish, and 14 servings of low-fat dairy such as milk, yogurt, or cheese.
They also say you can include a moderate amount—roughly one serving—of whole grains and unprocessed meat. A “clean” diet might look like one slice of bread, half a cup of cooked rice, barley, or quinoa, and approximately 85 grams of cooked red meat or poultry.
What Should a Healthy Diet Look Like?
Lead author Dr. Andrew Mente emphasizes that low-fat options have dominated public messaging and the food industry. Nutrition labels often focus on cutting total fat and saturated fat.
Dr. Mente’s team argues the priority should be increasing intake of protective foods: nuts, fish, and dairy products. These are frequently avoided because of their high calorie content.
Limiting dairy—especially full-fat dairy—to very low amounts is not necessary, Dr. Mente told reporters. The results indicate that up to two servings of dairy (mainly full-fat) can fit into a healthy diet. That matches modern nutrition science showing these products may help protect against high blood pressure and metabolic syndrome.
The Connection Between Diet and Health Outcomes
Each participant received a healthy diet score from zero to six. A score of five or more was associated with a lower risk of death. The calculations adjusted for age, sex, waist-to-hip ratio, education, income, urban versus rural location, physical activity, smoking, diabetes, use of statins or blood pressure drugs, and total energy intake.
The average diet score was 2.95. Over an average follow-up of 9.3 years there were 15,707 deaths and 40,764 heart attacks and strokes recorded.
Participants who scored five or higher had a 30% lower chance of dying during the study period than those who scored one or less. They also had a 19% lower chance of stroke, an 18% lower chance of cardiovascular disease, and a 14% lower chance of heart attack.
Dr. Mente says this was the most comprehensive study of nutrition and health outcomes to date and the only one with adequate representation from high-, middle-, and low-income countries. The link between a “clean” diet and better health outcomes held in generally healthy people, in patients with cardiovascular disease, in people with diabetes, and across different economic settings.
The biggest benefits appeared in regions with the poorest diet quality—South Asia, China, and parts of Africa—where calorie intake is low and refined carbohydrates are common. Cardiovascular diseases, including heart attacks and strokes, kill more people worldwide than any other cause. WHO estimates about 18 million people die from them each year, more than 30% of all deaths globally.
Dietitian Dariush Mozaffarian, who did not take part in the study, says these new findings on the “clean” diet, together with earlier reports, justify rethinking firm recommendations to avoid full-fat dairy products. He believes national dietary guidelines should be updated to reflect that change.
