Even though whole milk consumption has been one of the few bright spots for fluid milk in recent years as individuals recognize its taste benefits and health outcomes, fuller-fat dairy has made very little progress with nutrition experts and policymakers. Diets higher in saturated fats have been associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, and the stigma of fat consumption has been attached to dairy products even though more and more studies have found neutral or even beneficial health effects of dairy fats.

A study recently conducted in China now joins that list. The research, which has been published in the journal iMeta, looked to evaluate how milkfat interacts with blood lipid metabolism. Dietary fats are generally considered to contribute to obesity and cardiovascular disease because they overburden the body’s blood lipid levels, limiting metabolism and leading to more fat storage. But the other beneficial compounds in milk as well as a study of people in 21 countries where dairy consumption was related to lower mortality and cardiovascular disease complicates that relationship, the researchers said.

In their work, they fed mice a normal diet (0.5 milliliters of milkfat) or a high-fat diet with whole milk (15 milliliters) for seven weeks. These levels correlate to a human consuming 100 grams of milkfat every day for five years.

Body weight was not different between the groups during the feeding period. Low-density lipoprotein (LDL, the “bad” cholesterol) was stable for mice on both diets, while the “good” high-density lipoprotein (HDL) was significantly higher in both groups.

The researchers also noted that the gut microbiome, which is influenced by diet, regulates a body’s metabolism. Results suggested that higher levels of milkfat more effectively reshaped the gut’s system of metabolites than when mice were fed the normal diet.

Overall, the research team concluded that long-term consumption of whole milk and its fat did not significantly raise body weight and the blood lipid burden in these mice. In fact, milkfat helped improve the diversity of the gut microbiome and metabolites that are involved in lipid regulation. Even though this research was not conducted in humans, it is a valuable insight into how dairy fats are different from other sources of fat and do not carry some of the same negative impacts that other types of fat do.