For Brain Health, Is Cheddar Better?

"I was lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, spending a year between college and medical school working as a singing waiter in a restaurant called the Hollywood Savoy in the 2nd arrondissement. It's still open, but it looks like the waiters don't sing anymore. Tant pis. In any case, living on a French waiter's salary back then wasn't easy."

"This might not have been the best for my GI health, but according to a new study at least, all that cheese intake might serve to protect my brain in the long term. That's right. This week, nutritional epidemiology rears its delicious head again as we discuss whether high-fat-cheese-eating prevents dementia. The public gets understandably frustrated with new studies that suggest that a particular food or ingredient is healthy, or unhealthy, or should be avoided at all costs."

"Think of all the balanced diet advice you've ever heard: Eat a mix of fruits and vegetables, grains and low-fat dairy you know: yogurt, cottage cheese, and so on. And yet here we have a study, High- and Low-Fat Dairy Consumption and Long-Term Risk of Dementia, appearing in the journal Neurology, that turns that dairy part on its head. It's the high-fat cheese that is good for you after all. Throw out your part-skim mozzarella and pass the Stilton."

Participants from the Malmo Diet and Cancer cohort had detailed dietary profiles collected between 1991 and 1996. Dietary intake was categorized by fat content, separating high-fat dairy and cheese from low-fat dairy options. Long-term follow-up assessed incident dementia in relation to these dietary patterns. Higher intake of high-fat cheese was associated with a reduced risk of dementia over long-term follow-up compared with lower-fat dairy choices. These findings run counter to common recommendations favoring low-fat dairy and exemplify how nutritional epidemiology can produce surprising, and sometimes conflicting, messages about single foods.

Read at www.medscape.com