The Study
Dairy Food Intake and All-Cause, Cardiovascular Disease, and Cancer Mortality: The Golestan Cohort Study
This study watched what people ate for 11 years and noticed that those who ate more yogurt and cheese tended to live longer. But it didn’t make them eat more—it just watched. So we can’t say yogurt and cheese made them live longer, just that they were linked.
Analysis score
Maximum 72 for a cohort study.
Where the score came from
Scientists tracked what 42,000 people in Iran ate for 11 years to see if dairy foods like yogurt and cheese affected how long they lived.
Where does this study sit?
Reviews of RCTs (Meta-analyses)
Max 100Randomized Trials
Max 90Reviews of Cohort Studies
Max 85Cohort Studies
Max 72Reviews of Case-Control Studies
Max 63Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional & Case Series
Max 50Expert Opinion
Max 560 / 100
Quality score
Groups of people are followed over time to see who develops an outcome. Strong for identifying risk factors and associations, but cannot prove causation as firmly as RCTs.
Key takeaways
Summary
Based on the study abstract and findings.
- 1Yes — eating yogurt and cheese regularly may help people live longer, especially if they're not overweight, but milk and butter don't seem to help or hurt.
- 2People who ate more yogurt and cheese were 16–26% less likely to die from heart disease, and 11–16% less likely to die from any cause.
- 3People who ate milk or high-fat dairy didn't show any benefit.
- 4The benefit only happened in people who weren't obese.
Score breakdown, methodology, conflicts of interest, evidence analysis & raw study data
Publication
Journal
American Journal of Epidemiology
Year
2017
Authors
M. Farvid, A. F. Malekshah, A. Pourshams, H. Poustchi, S. Sepanlou, M. Sharafkhah, M. Khoshnia, Mojtaba Farvid, C. Abnet, F. Kamangar, S. Dawsey, P. Brennan, P. Pharoah, P. Boffetta, W. Willett, R. Malekzadeh
Related Content
Claims (10)
Eating cheese, regardless of how much, does not increase the risk of dying from any cause.
People who eat cheese have lower rates of death from heart disease compared to those who do not.
People who eat cheese have the same or lower risk of dying from any cause compared to those who eat less cheese.
People who eat cheese do not have lower rates of death from cancer compared to those who eat less cheese.
People who eat about 30 grams of cheese every day have a lower risk of dying from any cause compared to those who do not.
In a study of 42,403 Iranian adults followed for 11 years, those who ate more total dairy products, especially low-fat dairy, yogurt, and cheese, had a 19% lower risk of dying from any cause and a 28% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease compared to those who ate less, after accounting for age, sex, smoking, obesity, wealth, and other dietary habits.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making health decisions.