Skim milk & diabetes risk
Haley Sanders
Article Summary
“Skim milk could increase your risk of diabetes, studies suggest” written 4/6/16 by Rachel Dicker of USNews.com. This article talks about a study published by The Circulation that suggests full-fat dairy products may be better for you than low-fat dairy products such as skim milk. The blood of over 3,000 healthy adults was analyzed over a 15 year period, and the results were shocking. People in the study who had higher levels of three full-dairy byproducts actually had a lower risk of developing diabetes, by nearly 46 percent. The data was even analyzed with considerations and adjustments for the role that weight plays in diabetes development, but the correlation stood strong regardless. Although the science behind how these dairy byproducts work to lower the risk of diabetes is still unclear, it is believed that they may work to regulate glucose and insulin levels in the body. This study also took into consideration that high-fat foods can help you feel full longer, and that it's a possibility that people who consume full-fat dairy are consuming less calories overall daily.
Article Critique
This article came from the US news website. This was a “.com” website, and therefore is not the most reliable source of information on the web. For more reliable information from the internet, you should visit .org and .gov or .mil websites. For information about health and nutrition it would be more reliable to seek information from a source of which these areas are the main focus, and has information provided by credible individuals in the field. The author of this article was Rachel Dicker, who is as associate editor of social media for the US News & World Report. In my opinion, Rachel being an editor for the social media aspect of US News lowers her credibility, because social media has nothing to do with scientific research or nutrition. She does not have any credentials that qualify her to evaluate scientific studies, or prove that she has any type of understanding of these study findings. The date this article was published was April 6, 2016, so these findings are still very new and under-studied. While this article is based on the results of a scientific study, it was just one study alone. The conclusion can also be misleading. The entire article points out that full-fat dairy products have been found to be better for you and lower the risk of diabetes when compared to low-fat dairy products, yet the conclusion of the article states that the science behind all of this is still unclear. This could be confusing and misleading to people who read the article and take it as the green light to eliminate fat-free dairy and replace it all together with only full-fat dairy.