There are a number of health benefits of eating ice cream. However, nutritionists are still reluctant to share their findings with the public. This is what the American magazine wrote Atlantic Ocean.
In 2018, for example, a Harvard PhD student came to an unusual finding in his research on dairy products and chronic diseases. For diabetics, eating half a cup of ice cream per day is associated with a lower risk of heart disease, he wrote in his thesis.
“There aren’t many plausible biological explanations for these findings,” the article went on, adding that he wasn’t the first to discover a health benefit from ice cream.
Lower risk of diabetes
A 1985 study found the same thing. According to a Harvard Medical School study, enjoying a “dairy-based dessert” — ice cream — was associated with a lower risk of metabolic syndrome — a precursor to diabetes. Ice cream had the biggest effect in the study.
Another Harvard study from 2005 showed that ice cream has health benefits. According to the study, men who drank two or more cups of skim or low-fat milk per day had a 22% lower risk of developing diabetes. The same was true for men who ate two or more servings of ice cream each week. The numbers also suggest that ice cream may be the strongest preventive measure against diabetes when it comes to dairy.
Scientists question the ice cream theory
However, nutrition experts have been reluctant to share the surprising findings, which put ice cream in the same healthy category as yogurt (which is also said to lower the risk of diabetes).
Several researchers told The Atlantic they believe it has a reverse causal relationship, meaning if you have diabetes, you don’t eat greasy ice cream, while healthy people continue to eat ice cream.
“I still think the ice cream result may have an opposite cause-and-effect relationship,” says one of the researchers. “But I’m not sure, and it bothers me a bit.”
If ice cream were a patented drug, the researcher believes, “you can be sure the company would have done a $30 million study to see if ice cream prevented diabetes.”
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