Research

Hormonal

Higher habitual dairy intake does NOT causally affect glycemic traits (fasting glucose, insulin, HbA1c) in adults, despite observational associations.

You do not need to avoid dairy for blood sugar control. The study suggests dairy does not causally affect glycemic traits, so it can be included in a healthy diet without fear of worsening blood sugar levels.

GoodRefutesHIGH confidence
We did not find the causal relevance of dairy intake with glycemic traits such as fasting glucose, insulin, insulin sensitivity and insulin resistance... Our findings imply that the observational associations of dairy intake with glycemic traits could be the result of confounding.
Mendelian Randomization of Dairy Consumption Working Group et al. · Clinical Chemistry · 2019

Why this rating

Large sample size and robust MR methodology support the null finding, providing strong evidence against a causal link.

Source

Dairy Intake and Body Composition and Cardiometabolic Traits among Adults: Mendelian Randomization Analysis of 182041 Individuals from 18 Studies

Mendelian Randomization of Dairy Consumption Working Group et al. · Clinical Chemistry · 2019

DOI 10.1373/clinchem.2018.300335

Meta-analysis · 18 studiesCited 28×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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