NutritionMagazine, No.4, 2011, Vol.24

New scientific developments regarding nutrition and health: ‘food for thought’

Preface

In the IDEAL (Improving Diet, Exercise And Lifestyle) study in Canada, overweight and obese women followed for 16 weeks energy-restricted diets varying in share of dairy products and protein content. The diet with the highest level of dairy consumption and a high protein level resulted in the highest loss of body fat and an increase in fat-free boy mass. The researchers concluded that a high protein intake, notably protein from dairy products, combined with energy restriction and aerobic and resistance training can contribute appreciably to improved body composition during a period of weight loss.

In the Oslo Health Study, a cross-sectional study of 18,000 men and women in Norway, an inverse correlation was found of frequency of cheese consumption with metabolic syndrome, the values of separate characteristics of the metabolic syndrome, the number of these characteristics and body mass index. The associations remained significant after correction for a large number of possible confounders.

The group of Prof. Walter Willett in Boston found that individuals who drink two to four glasses of milk a day in childhood are at much lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes later in life. Willett's group inquired in that context about the consumption patterns of 120,000 nurses when they were at high school (the Nurses' Health Study).

In a Chinese meta-analysis of seven cohort studies of consumption of dairy products and risk of type 2 diabetes (330,000 normal-weight and slightly overweight men and women aged 39—57), dairy products were found to protect against type 2 diabetes (RR 0.86, 95% confidence interval 0.79—0.92). Although epidemiological studies as such only produce associations rather than proof, these findings do provide ‘food for thought'.

A group of experts in Canada, the USA, France and Denmark has published in Advances in Nutrition a literature survey of the health effects of dietary natural trans fatty acids (TFA). Natural TFA (in milk and ruminant meat) do not show the unfavourable health effects associated with intake of industrial TFA. People on a regular diet TFA intake is much lower for natural TFA than for industrial TFA.

In October 2011, the dentist Dr Halima El Aidi obtained in Nijmegen her doctoral degree on the basis of research into acid erosion (dental erosion) in children aged 10—12. She concluded that acid erosion is a gradually expanding problem and that milk and dairy products protect against its development.

In this issue attention is also paid to the outcomes of the new Dutch National Food Consumption Survey and to the guest column entitled ‘The future of diet and health: individual assessment and personalized diets' written by Prof. Bruce German (University of California, Davis, CA).

I wish you much reading pleasure.
Prof. Gert Jan Hiddink, Editor-in-Chief of Nutrition Magazine

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