Confused about what to eat and drink to protect your health? I’m not surprised.

For example, after decades of research-supported dietary advice to reduce saturated fats to minimize the risk of heart disease and stroke, along comes a new observational study of 136,384 people in 21 countries linking consumption of full-fat (read saturated) dairy foods to a lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease.

But without dissecting each study included in this meta-analysis, it is not possible to say what might be behind this surprising result and whether you should now resume putting cream in your coffee and whole milk in your cereal bowl. The study may simply mean that consuming the equivalent of three servings of dairy products a day is healthful, not saturated fat per se.

Caution is in order, especially since another new study, this one a randomly assigned clinical trial, found that three weeks on a diet rich in saturated fat caused liver fat and insulin resistance to rise far higher than diets high in sugar or unsaturated fat.

Or maybe you bought into the hype about pomegranate juice as an antioxidant superfood, only to learn from an illuminating new book that the health-promoting evidence for this expensive fruit drink derives mainly from $20 million of company-sponsored research.