FIGURE 2.

Associations between dairy product consumption and eight diseases or risk factors. Within the text boxes, a downwards pointing arrow indicates that increasing dairy product consumption to recommended levels would decrease incidence of the disease or risk factor, and inversely. Between the text boxes, solid lines represent associations with consistent evidence bases and plausible mechanisms while dashed lines represent overlapping causal pathways. Where causal pathways overlapped, estimates for disease burden and expenditure on the proximal disease or risk factor (illustrated left to right) were adjusted to exclude the attributable portion of the distal disease to avoid double-counting. IHD, ischemic heart disease; T2DM, type 2 diabetes mellitus.