Improving diet of cows beneficial to public health

BY PUTTING cows on a radical diet scientists believe they can improve the health of milk and dairy consumers.

The ground-breaking research, part of an EU initiative, may prove to be one of the most beneficial developments in the battle against food-related heart disease.

The five-year study focused on the largest source of dietary saturated fat — milk and dairy products.

Researchers, who will unveil their findings at a conference in University College Dublin (UCD) on Friday, have managed to improve the unsaturated fat content of milk by changing the feeding regimes of dairy cows.

This discovery can be used to reduce saturated fat in normal diets, and in turn lower the risks of people suffering from health conditions like coronary heart disease which are influenced by diet, the study claims.

Obesity costs the EU an estimated €32.8 billion each year and it is estimated that 50% of Europeans will be obese by 2050.

Milk and dairy products represent the single largest source of dietary saturated fat in EU countries, including Ireland.

At the Lipgene conference this week, UCD Professor Michael Gibney and the co-ordinator of the project will call on EU policymakers to evaluate the evidence and “decide how best to move forward with this groundbreaking research”.

The scientists warned that a public health strategy to reduce the intake of milk and dairy products “would ignore the fact that these foods also supply about 30% of dietary monounsaturated fats in many EU countries and are key sources of other important nutrients including vitamin B12 and calcium”.

“Our research set out to discover ways of reducing the amount of saturated fat in the average diet, by investigating methods of lowering the saturated fat content of milk fat, rather than reducing the dietary intake of milk products,” said Prof Ian Givens at the University of Reading, and one of the scientists on the EU programme.

“We decreased the levels of saturates in milk fat by including rape seed supplements high in a monounsaturated fatty acid in the diet of the dairy cows. This has the added advantage that the milk fat has increased amounts of monounsaturated fats,” he stated.

“If consumers were to switch to these new food products, we estimate that as many as 15,000 early deaths from heart disease and stroke across the EU could be saved each year.”