Study of the Impact of Dairy Fat on Cardiovascular Health.

Summary

Market trends depicted by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada suggest stagnation in cheese consumption, with potentially important impact on this key industry in Canada. This is in part due to the commonly accepted notion that saturated fat in the diet, of which cheese contributes significantly, increases the risk of heart disease. Yet, a rather large body of recent evidence suggests that saturated fat may have been unfairly demonized and that its impact on the risk of heart disease may in fact be less important than originally thought. This concept that dairy fat increases the risk of heart attacks therefore needs to be revisited, and this is one of the key objectives of this proposed research program.

The proposed research is designed to investigate for the first time if dairy fat improves the levels of the so-called "good cholesterol", a protective risk factor that has been essentially ignored in the arguments supporting the reduction of saturated fat for heart health.

Our hypothesis is that consumption of SFA from dairy (cheese) compared with a low fat diet and diets rich in MUFA and PUFA leads to favorable changes in plasma HDL-C concentrations and functional characteristics. Consumption of SFA from dairy (cheese) also increases LDL particle size, reduces inflammation and has no deleterious impact on plasma LDL-C and apolipoproteins B (apoB) concentrations compared with a low fat diet.

Conditions

• Metabolic Syndrome

Interventions

OTHER

Cheese diet

OTHER

Butter diet

OTHER

CHO diet

OTHER

MUFA diet

OTHER

PUFA diet

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

  collaborator OTHER_GOV

• Dairy Farmers of Canada

  collaborator OTHER

• Laval University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Benoît Lamarche, PhD · Laval University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

SINGLE

Model

CROSSOVER

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

65 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2014-04-30

Primary Completion

2016-06-30

Completion

2017-12-31

Countries

• Canada

Study Locations