Is ice cream good for health? A Harvard study has a surprising answer

When we think of ice cream, it is inevitable to remember this scene of Bridget Jones eating ice cream in her bed after a romantic disappointment, and it seems like ice cream is the best way to heal the heart, and although it sounds absurd, it’s not that far from the truth.

A finding from Harvard University’s Department of Nutrition suggests that parfait has health benefits. A discovery that puzzled the researchers. How can a sweet milk treatment give such results, when the website of The Harvard Nutrition Source calls ice cream an “indulgent” dairy food that’s considered a “sometimes” treat.

However, the conclusion was clear. In 2018, a Harvard PhD student named Andres Ardisson Korat came to a strange conclusion during one of his studies: for people with diabetes, eating one cup of ice cream a day was associated with a lower risk of heart problems reports Atlantic.

In doubt, the director of the department, Frank Hu, had instructed Ardisson Korat to investigate a little more. Maybe there was a miscalculation or some random artifact skewing the result, but no, efforts to discredit his research were in vain and the ice cream sign was there.

“There are few plausible biological explanations for these results,” Ardisson Korat wrote in his thesis about his “unexpected” discovery. However, the doctoral student was not the first to observe this finding, as there were previous studies that found similar effects.

During the 1980s, Harvard researchers began collecting “food frequency questionnaires” and medical data from thousands of healthcare workers. These world-renowned studies have fueled a number of influential findings, including some of the data that caused the elimination of trans fats of the food supply.

Harvard’s first observational study of type 2 diabetes and dairy products was published in 2005 ; is based on data collected between 1986 and 1998. The researchers said a higher intake of low-fat dairy products was associated with a lower risk of diabetes. “The reduction in risk was almost exclusively associated with low-fat or fat-free dairy products,” explained a Harvard newsletter.

According to the data, men consuming at least two servings of skimmed or low-fat milk per day had a 22% lower risk of diabetes . But the same goes for men who eat two or more servings of ice cream each week.

Once again, the data suggests that ice cream may be the strongest diabetes prophylactic in the dairy aisle. But scientists are still baffled by Ardisson Korat’s findings, which defied all logic.

Over the years, studies that support the positive side of ice cream with similar results continue to emerge, but Harvard scientists don’t want to talk about them. One of the reasons suggested by The Atlantic is that The finding goes against everything that’s been said before about ice cream: that it’s an unhealthy food.

So far, no one has proven the discovery of ice cream wrong, and several studies claim it’s good for your health, so a cup of ice cream won’t hurt anyone.