Eating yogurt regularly may not improve your health

By Sally Robertson, B.Sc.Apr 23 2015

Eating yogurt on a regular basis does not necessarily improve health-related quality of life, report Spanish researchers.

The finding provides new information for evaluating the claims made by the dairy industry about the healthy properties of yogurt.

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In a study of more than 4,000 people, followed for an average of 3.5 years, Esther López-García (Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain) and colleagues found no association between regular yogurt consumption and improved physical and mental parameters.

For years, researchers have claimed that eating yogurt regularly is associated with health benefits, although the effects of consuming this product have never actually been proven.

Now, López-García and team have analysed the relationship between yogurt consumption and self-reported physical and mental improvements in health-related quality of life, using the SF-12 survey. The study included 4,445 adult participants who were recruited between 2008 and 2010 and then followed using the survey until 2012.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, health-related quality of life encompasses “aspects of overall quality of life that can be clearly shown to affect health – either physical or mental.”

As reported in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, regular yogurt consumption was not linked to any significant improvements in health-related quality of life.

Specifically, participants that ate six or fewer servings of yogurt per week reported similar physical health survey scores to participants who ate at least one serving each day. This was also the case among participants who had no illnesses, had never smoked or followed a healthy diet, factors that could obscure the relationship.

In Spain and other countries, dietary guidelines support the consumption of dairy products as part of a healthy diet. However, “the majority of studies have focused on the effect as a whole, but it would be interesting to evaluate the independent association between each type of product and global health indicators," points out López-García.

“For future research more specific instruments must be used which may increase the probability of finding a potential benefit of this food,” she adds.