Association between consumption of dairy products and incident type 2 diabetes—insights from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer study

The public health burden of type 2 diabetes has risen unabated over the past decades, fueled by obesity and lifestyle influences, including diet quality. Epidemiological evidence is accumulating for an inverse association between dairy product intake and type 2 diabetes risk; this is somewhat counterintuitive to the saturated fat and cardiometabolic disease paradigm. The present report reviews the contribution that the findings of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer (EPIC) study have made to this debate, noting that types of dairy products, particularly fermented dairy products including yogurt, may be more relevant than overall dairy intake for the prevention of type 2 diabetes. The EPIC study has contributed evidence through complementary approaches of a large prospective study across 8 European countries with heterogeneous dietary intakes assessed using food-frequency questionnaires (EPIC-InterAct study) and through a more detailed examination of diet assessed using a 7-day food diary (EPIC-Norfolk study). The implications of these findings are placed in the wider context, including the use of individual fatty acid blood biomarkers in the EPIC-InterAct study and an appraisal of current research gaps and suggestions for future research directions.