In what would be great news for lovers of dairy products, a new study has found that consumption of dairy foods has no link whatsoever to an increase in a person's risk of heart disease!

On the basis of a comprehensive analysis, researchers from the Department of Community Heath at Brown University in Providence, R. I., have come to the conclusion that there was no statistical difference between the number of heart attacks cases in people who consumed dairy products and those who did not.

The data that the researchers - Stella Aslibekyan, Ana Baylin, and Hannia Campos - analyzed comprised statistics from a Harvard School of Public Health survey of 3,630 Costa Rican men and women, aged less than 75 years.

The new analysis, which divided into five groups based on dairy consumption, found that dairy intake was not linked with the risk of heart attack.

In fact, noting that dairy - which, for the study, included butter, buttermilk, cheese, cottage cheese, cream cheese, cream, ice cream, lactocrema, 1 percent milk, 2 percent milk, whole milk and yogurt - is a rich source of calcium, magnesium, potassium and vitamin D, the researchers said that the effect of dairy products is "likely to involve a balance of factors."

Commenting on the findings, Aslibekyan confirmed: "The overall message of dairy consumption, at least in the levels we studied, is that it is not likely to increase your risk of heart attack"!