5. Conclusions
metabolic endotoxemia, MEB
Overall, findings of this acute RCT show that MFGM-enriched MEB does not alleviate metabolic endotoxemia by improving gut barrier function or glycemia, suggesting that it does not adversely impact cardiometabolic health compared with an alternative milk-like beverage formulated with plant phospholipid and oils. While this short-term study suggests that MEB neither improves nor impairs cardiometabolic health, longer-term interventions are needed to better recapitulate outcomes from observational studies that generally consider longer time frames of exposure to dairy milk. Overall, these results provide evidence in contradiction of public health messages that have long-associated full-fat dairy milk with enhanced cardiometabolic risk. Indeed, our data show that dietary inclusion of MEB (or COMP) can help facilitate a small, but statistically significant, decrease in body mass that warrants detailed assessment in long-term intervention. Further, while MEB and COMP had identical carbohydrate and protein ingredients, as well as similar fatty acid profiles, their major difference was the sphingomyelin content. Sphingomyelin has demonstrated prebiotic and anti-microbial activities in vitro and in rodents [