Cheese, Cream & Dementia: Brain Health Benefits?

Some supposedly good news before the holidays comes from neurologists: people who eat a lot of high-fat cheese such as Brie, Gouda or Cheddar have a lower risk of developing dementia. Scientists from Lund University observed this and have now published it in “Neurology”. They recorded the eating habits of over 27,000 people in Sweden and monitored their brain health for 25 years.

When the studies began, the study participants were on average 58 years old. They kept a record of their eating habits for a week and answered researchers’ questions about how often they had eaten certain foods over the past few years. They also told the researchers how they prepare their food.

Of the study participants who ate at least 50 grams of cheese a day, i.e. about two large slices, with a fat content of over 20 percent, ten percent had developed dementia by the end of the observation period. Of those who consumed less than 15 grams, thirteen percent did. The same was true for people who had a lot of cream or crème fraîche on their table.

However, milk, butter, reduced-fat dairy products as well as yogurt, buttermilk or kefir had no effect on brain health in this study. The authors of the observational study suspect that these differences do not necessarily have anything to do with fat content, but may have to do with other substances in milk fat, such as certain vitamins. The Swedish researchers did not investigate causal connections.

More or less saturated fat?

For decades, doctors and nutritionists have recommended avoiding foods with a high proportion of saturated fatty acids – including high-fat cheeses. Is this all outdated now?

The situation is more complicated with dairy products, comments epidemiologist Tian-Shin Yeh from Harvard Medical School also in “Neurology”. On the one hand, nutritional habits and genetic requirements vary greatly from region to region, for example between Asia and Europe; Researchers in Japan were unable to find a connection between cheese consumption and dementia. The study results are therefore hardly transferable globally. On the other hand, it was not examined whether dairy products replace other foods, such as meat or sweets. The biggest limitation, however, is that the authors only recorded the diet of the study participants at the beginning of the observation period. As a result, the significance of the study is low. Because it is likely that habits and living conditions change over time.

Quitting smoking, exercising, eating a balanced diet and reducing alcohol consumption have been shown to be more important in reducing the risk of dementia than focusing on a single group of foods, Richard Oakley of the Alzheimer Society in the United Kingdom told the UK Science Media Center.

The fundamental insight remains: nutrition that protects the heart and blood vessels also works against dementia in old age.