Maryrose, an Australian woman, has been eating a pint of vanilla ice cream every night for 13 years. Despite this seemingly unhealthy habit, she is in good health. This raises the question: can ice cream be healthy? While observational studies show a possible link between ice cream consumption and reduced risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, they cannot prove causation. Other factors, such as socioeconomic status and pre-existing health conditions, could influence the results. This article explores the complex relationship between ice cream and health, emphasizing the importance of understanding scientific evidence and considering the multifaceted role of food in our lives.
She's fit and healthy — she gets regular checks at the doctor's office every few months. And by all conventional measures — things like weight, blood sugar and cholesterol levels — she's in top shape. 'It's now been almost 13 years and I've been eating a pint of ice cream every night,' she says. For Australians, that's half a litre — or about three times as much as the typical recommended serve of ice cream. She's a purist — vanilla only, thanks.
And Maryrose says the nightly ritual is as much about winding down and relaxing as it is about the ice cream itself. Her pint-a-night habit started when she was pregnant with her first child. After finding it didn't seem to affect her health or energy levels, she never stopped.This habit definitely doesn't fit our standard advice of balance and moderation. How could it be that someone eating a pint a night bucks the conventional wisdom on what's good for your health? But what is healthy? And how can we make empowered decisions about what we eat? That comes down to two factors: understanding how evidence works, and what role food plays in our lives. Looking for advice, Maryrose asked an online forum of doctors whether ice cream could ever be healthy. 'They pretty much were uniformly saying that this was a bad idea, I can't do this, maybe I'm fine now, but, you know, I'm gonna get diabetes, I'm gonna clog my arteries,' she says.In nutrition science. It discussed mixed evidence showing that in some cases, ice cream could have a protective effect against some negative health outcomes — such as diabetes and heart disease. Multiple scientific studies show a positive association between ice cream and health. When diets are tracked and people are followed for a long time it appears that those who eat ice cream more often have a lower risk for type 2 diabetes and even cardiovascular disease. 'It is, I would say, what we would call a fairly classic and relatively strong epidemiological signal,' epidemiologist Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz of the University of Wollongong says. 'Like if you were just to say to some random epidemiologist, this is the graph of this risk and this potential preventative tool, they would probably say, 'Oh yeah, that looks quite convincing.'' But there are scientific reasons the effect seen in these studies might not actually be 'real' — a statistical anomaly rather than something that is happening in the real world. The studies looked at this 'ice cream paradox' are observational studies, where people are followed over time. That's distinct from randomised controlled trials, experiments where you split people into groups and give them different treatments or interventions. Observational trials can't prove that ice cream has a protective effect on our health. They can only show that the two things are linked.
HEALTH DIET ICE CREAM NUTRITION RESEARCH EVIDENCE
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