Feb 12, 2025 07:24 PM
Is ice cream good for you? Here's why some studies say it is
https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2025-.../104919572
EXCERPT: . . . . Maryrose's pint-a-night [of ice cream] habit started when she was pregnant with her first child. After finding it didn't seem to affect her health or energy levels, she never stopped.
I'm a food and nutrition scientist, and my instinctive reaction after speaking to Maryrose for our podcast series Cooked was that this habit definitely doesn't fit our standard advice of balance and moderation. How could it be that someone eating a pint a night bucks the conventional wisdom on what's good for your health?
But what is healthy? And how can we make empowered decisions about what we eat? That comes down to two factors: understanding how evidence works, and what role food plays in our lives. Could ice cream actually be good for you? Cooked dives into the research.
[...] among the responses was an article pointing to a complex and contested idea in nutrition science. It discussed mixed evidence showing that in some cases, ice cream could have a protective effect against some negative health outcomes — such as diabetes and heart disease.
What does the evidence say? Multiple scientific studies show a positive association between ice cream and health. When diets are tracked and people are followed for a long time it appears that those who eat ice cream more often have a lower risk for type 2 diabetes and even cardiovascular disease.
[...] But there are scientific reasons the effect seen in these studies might not actually be "real" — a statistical anomaly rather than something that is happening in the real world.
[....] So the effect could be explained in other ways. It might be that richer people, who are typically healthier overall, also buy and eat more ice cream. Or that less healthy people — say those with heart conditions or diabetes — have been told to avoid foods like ice cream by their doctor.
"People who know they're at risk for diabetes don't eat ice cream, and people who know, 'Boy, I'm never going to get diabetes because I'm super healthy' eat ice cream," Dariush Mozaffarian says.
[...] This mixed bag of findings isn't unusual in nutrition research. There isn't always one right answer. It can depend on the group of people studied and their context. The studies that show benefits are typically from Western nations like the US. The ones showing no benefit or increased risk are from Asian cohorts such as South Korea.
It's very likely that these places have different genetics in the population, different rates of the conditions being studied, different background diets, and maybe even different types and amounts of ice cream eaten.
Both sets of studies could be high quality; the results just might apply to different people... (MORE - details)
https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2025-.../104919572
EXCERPT: . . . . Maryrose's pint-a-night [of ice cream] habit started when she was pregnant with her first child. After finding it didn't seem to affect her health or energy levels, she never stopped.
I'm a food and nutrition scientist, and my instinctive reaction after speaking to Maryrose for our podcast series Cooked was that this habit definitely doesn't fit our standard advice of balance and moderation. How could it be that someone eating a pint a night bucks the conventional wisdom on what's good for your health?
But what is healthy? And how can we make empowered decisions about what we eat? That comes down to two factors: understanding how evidence works, and what role food plays in our lives. Could ice cream actually be good for you? Cooked dives into the research.
[...] among the responses was an article pointing to a complex and contested idea in nutrition science. It discussed mixed evidence showing that in some cases, ice cream could have a protective effect against some negative health outcomes — such as diabetes and heart disease.
What does the evidence say? Multiple scientific studies show a positive association between ice cream and health. When diets are tracked and people are followed for a long time it appears that those who eat ice cream more often have a lower risk for type 2 diabetes and even cardiovascular disease.
[...] But there are scientific reasons the effect seen in these studies might not actually be "real" — a statistical anomaly rather than something that is happening in the real world.
[....] So the effect could be explained in other ways. It might be that richer people, who are typically healthier overall, also buy and eat more ice cream. Or that less healthy people — say those with heart conditions or diabetes — have been told to avoid foods like ice cream by their doctor.
"People who know they're at risk for diabetes don't eat ice cream, and people who know, 'Boy, I'm never going to get diabetes because I'm super healthy' eat ice cream," Dariush Mozaffarian says.
[...] This mixed bag of findings isn't unusual in nutrition research. There isn't always one right answer. It can depend on the group of people studied and their context. The studies that show benefits are typically from Western nations like the US. The ones showing no benefit or increased risk are from Asian cohorts such as South Korea.
It's very likely that these places have different genetics in the population, different rates of the conditions being studied, different background diets, and maybe even different types and amounts of ice cream eaten.
Both sets of studies could be high quality; the results just might apply to different people... (MORE - details)