CHICAGO -- A diet high in dairy foods may help overweight adults reduce their risk of developing heart disease or late-onset diabetes, a study released on Tuesday said.

The study of 3,000 volunteers found that those with the highest dairy intake, even full-fat dairy foods such as butter and cream, were much less likely to become obese or develop IRS (insulin resistance syndrome) than their peers with more modest dairy consumption.

In fact, the volunteers who consumed dairy products five times a day were 72 per cent less likely to develop IRS than their counterparts who were eating it less than twice a day on average.

Symptoms of IRS include glucose intolerance, high blood pressure and low levels of so-called good cholesterol.

The condition impairs the body's ability to metabolise glucose and is thought to predispose individuals to type II (or adult-onset) diabetes and cardiovascular disease: two lifestyle-related diseases that have become the scourge of Western nations.

The study appears in Wednesday's edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association and was carried out by researchers at Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

They based their findings on a 10-year study of 3,157 adults who were aged between 18 and 30, and were about 11-14 kg overweight. -- AFP