Milk, yogurt and cheese are well known as important sources of calcium, but these foods are natural sources of many other nutrients too.
Cutting out dairy is fine if you take a calcium supplement.
Therefore, removing dairy from your diet may result in compromised intakes of not just calcium, but the full ‘matrix’ of nutrients naturally provided by dairy foods.
The emerging concept of the dairy ‘matrix’ looks at how the various nutrients and components present in dairy work together in synergy. This research explores how the health effects of these nutrients, when consumed in dairy, may be more effective than the individual nutrients working in isolation.
