Research

Mixed

Higher intake of poultry, milk, and cheese is associated with reduced mortality risk in unadjusted models, but this protective effect is also substantially attenuated after adjusting for lifestyle confounders.

While high intake of poultry, milk, and cheese is linked to lower mortality in initial analyses, this benefit appears to be driven largely by associated lifestyle factors like not smoking, healthy weight, and moderate alcohol use rather than the food itself. Focus on maintaining a healthy lifestyle, as these factors likely explain the observed benefits more than the specific foods alone.

GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
Adjusting for age, sex, and total energy intake, risk models showed... reduced risks for poultry, milk, or cheese (HR ranging from 0.55 [0.43–0.72] to 0.88 [0.81–0.95]). Adjusting further for smoking history, adiposity indices, alcohol consumption, and physical activity levels, the statistical significance of all these observed was erased, except for... cheese intake with cancer mortality (HR = 0.86 [0.76–0.98]), which, however, was substantially attenuated.
Rashmita Bajracharya et al. · Nutrients · 2023

Why this rating

Large prospective cohort study with rigorous adjustment.

Source

Food Sources of Animal Protein in Relation to Overall and Cause-Specific Mortality—Causal Associations or Confounding? An Analysis of the EPIC-Heidelberg Cohort

Rashmita Bajracharya et al. · Nutrients · 2023

DOI 10.3390/nu15153322

cohort · n=22748Cited 3×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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