It Turns Out All That Cheese You Eat Can Be Really Good For You

If you've been feeling guilty about all that pizza and ice cream you've been eating, you can officially stop.

OK, so maybe that's a bit of overstatement. But according to new research, you can at the very least ditch the skim milk because regularly consuming full-fat dairy (cheese!) leads to a lower risk of diabetes.

Published in the journal Circulation, researchers analyzed the blood of 3,333 adults between the ages of 30 and 75 over a 15-year period.

Here's what they found: Participants who had different byproducts of full-fat dairy in their blood had a 44 percent lower diabetes risk.

While, once upon a time, we were consistently told fat made us fat, in recent years, it's become clear that's not the case. While it's true fat contains a lot of calories, calories are not necessarily the be-all, end-all when it comes to health and weight loss.

As Doctor Mark Hyman, author of "Eat Fat, Get Thin: Why the Fat We Eat Is the Key to Sustained Weight Loss and Vibrant Health" explains on his blog,

When people eat less fat, they tend to eat more starch or sugar instead, and this actually increases their levels of dangerous cholesterol, the small, dense cholesterol that causes heart attacks.

On top of that, consuming more sugar will lead you to crave more calories throughout the day, whereas fat -- we're mostly talking about good fats here, of course -- will keep you satiated for hours.

Have a great weekend, and make sure you eat tons of cheese!