Results of epidemiological studies that have evaluated the relationship between dairy food consumption and risk of metabolic syndrome are not consistent and sometimes controversial.
We performed the present study to identify the association of dairy intake and the metabolic syndrome and its individual components (abdominal obesity, low HDL-cholesterol, hypertriglyceridemia, hyperglycemia and high blood pressure).
This study included 763 individuals clinically selected for the lifestyle modification program "Move for health" and fulfilling the inclusion criteria of having data of socioeconomic, demographic, physical activity and dietary assessments, as well as the anthropometric, clinical and biochemical assessments for the metabolic syndrome diagnosis (National Cholesterol Educational Program Treatment Panel III). A 24-h dietary recall was used to estimate the dietary intake and 3 daily servings of dairy were considered as adequate. Statistical analysis was performed using the SAS 9.3 software, t-student, ANOVA, Tukey and logistic regression analysis, adopting the significance level of p < 0.05.
Among the individuals of our cohort, the majority was female, with low family income, poor diet, and abdominal obesity. The lower decile of dairy intake was associated with lower income, lower healthy score index, lower intake of total energy, lower intake of saturated fatty acids, and lower intake of calcium. Lower dairy intake was not associated with the presence of metabolic syndrome and rather, with hypertension.
This study found an inverse association of dairy intake and presence of hypertension, which may support the potential benefit of dairy consumption, as part of a balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle, to prevent the development or delay the onset hypertension in this population.