Assessing health effects of yogurt for US children
NHANES is a wide and unique survey, which assesses the health and nutritional status of adults and children in the US, by combining interviews and physical examinations. This is why it allows researchers to study a large sample of 5,124 children, aged 2–18 years, in a time lapse of 3 years. They looked at two indicators: diet quality and metabolic profiles. Diet quality was evaluated by the Healthy Eating Index 2005 (HEI-2005), a reference tool created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture which assessed the conformance of the diet, according to Federal dietary guidance. For the metabolic profiles, they considered several indicators, including fasting insulin level, insulin sensitivity, body weight, fasting glucose, and blood pressure.
Lower fasting insulin level and insulin resistance
This study shows that children, who eat yogurt frequently (at least once per week), had a better diet quality, as indicated by a higher score of HEI-2005. Frequent yogurt consumers also had a better metabolic profiles, with a lower fasting insulin level, less insulin resistance and a better insulin sensitivity. The authors didn’t found any association between yogurt consumption and body weight or blood pressure in this study, but this will require further investigations.
To learn more about the health effects of yogurt, read the original article.
Source : Zhu Y et al. European Journal of Nutrition, June 2015, Volume 54, Issue 4, pp 543-550. DOI 10.1007/s00394-014-0735-7
