Could Ice Cream Actually Have a Health Benefit?

If you love ice cream, you may have been pleased to see recent headlines suggesting that indulging in your favorite flavor could actually have some surprising health benefits. A long-running Harvard study tracking roughly 190,000 people over several decades found that regular consumption of ice cream and other forms of dairy correlates to lower rates of type two diabetes. But before you go grab a bowl of Ben and Jerry’s, it’s important to understand the details.

The research, published in 2014, looked at data from two large observational studies conducted by researchers at Harvard University—the Nurses’ Health Study I, which began in 1976, and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, which started in 1986. Both studies ran for between 20 and 40 years and tracked the health of participants over a long period of time. The goal was to understand if certain diseases were linked to lifestyle factors, like diet.

The researchers found that participants who ate small portions of real ice cream every week showed a lower statistical risk of developing type two diabetes and heart disease compared to those who ate none. Some scientists also suggested a possible explanation involving the milk fat globule membrane (MFGM), a structure that naturally surrounds fat droplets in dairy products. They theorized that MFGM may have metabolic effects, but its role in explaining the ice cream findings remains uncertain.

It’s worth pointing out that the research is purely observational, meaning it can identify associations between people’s eating habits and their health but can’t establish that one caused the other. In other words, the researchers can’t say for sure that eating ice cream itself reduced people’s risk of diabetes. There could be other differences between people who ate ice cream and those who didn’t that helped explain the results.

And there’s another reason not to interpret the findings as a licence to eat unlimited ice cream. Harvard’s own Nutrition Source notes that evidence linking dairy foods with type two diabetes is mixed, with some of the more consistent associations involving foods such as yogurt rather than indulgent dairy products like ice cream. Despite conflicting opinions, nutritionists agree you should avoid frozen desserts that replace milk fat with vegetable oils, or ice cream brands that use stabilizers and emulsifiers.

So while ice cream is certainly not a health food, this research raises some interesting questions about the relationship between dairy fat, diet, and metabolic health. For now, there’s no evidence that ice cream should be eaten specifically to prevent diabetes, but there is certainly more to learn from the popular frozen dessert than we once thought.

You can read the full study on the National Library of Medicine.