Eat your cheese.. for your brain

Not a very large study (1,787 people, and covering 10 years at most). It also isn’t clear if they accounted for other factors, like social interaction (is cheese more common when being sociable? Red wine as well?)

But I like the outcome so I’m running with it.

Here are four of the most significant findings from the study:

  1. Cheese, by far, was shown to be the most protective food against age-related cognitive problems, even late into life;
  2. The daily consumption of alchohol, particularly red wine, was related to improvements in cognitive function;

et cetera: considering the number of participants (coincidence? I think not!), perhaps a constitutional amendment for the establishment of cheese as an inalienable right is worthy of consideration.

I’m pretty sure it’s the cognitive exercice of trying to pretend to like wine and cheese that’s good for your mental health.

Being snooty involves a lot of brain work.

fresh fruit, dried fruit, raw vegetables and salad, cooked vegetables, oily fish, lean fish, processed meat, poultry, beef, lamb, pork, cheese, bread, cereal, tea and coffee, beer and cider, red wine, white wine and champaign [sic] and liquor.

Cheese and wine seem to be the main major fermented or microbe-altered foods listed: not enough saurkraut, miso, kimchi, yogurt, kefir, sourdough, kombucha?

That’s why Lamb was the only meat which had a correlation.

Do cheese steaks count?

Where was this test done? Someplace where liking wine and cheese is something only people of “culture” do? AKA, people with money? Or somewhere like my grandparents village, where everyone makes their own wine and cheese?

Hell yes.

I actually clicked through to the study (though I could only see the abstract, the article was like 30 bucks or something) and it was in the UK (the “UK biobank”, whatever that is). I’m super skeptical of this because (1) nutrition studies have a bad track record and more specifically (2) they looked at a ton of things, like more than twenty, so you’d naturally expect some false positives if your threshold is p < 0.05. That said they claim that for cheese they saw p = 0.001, so maybe there’s something to it. And this is speculation, but I think with these kinds of things the diet part is usually self-reported, so…

So fondue and vodka martinis it is!

Findings like this are why the phrase “correlation does not imply causality” is so popular.

I get your point. Maybe people aren’t actually eating the cheese. Maybe the cheese is forcing itself upon the eater and the cheese are choosing healthier hosts. They do say cheese is alive, after all. With some of the cheese I’ve seen (and smelled), I wouldn’t rule it out.

More research is needed.

I’M GOING TO LIVE FOREVER.

When I was a kid I’d eat Velveeta like candy bars, and any other cheese I could find. Thinking ahead, me.

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Unfortunately, “Pasteurized Recipe Cheese Product” is not a synonym for “cheese,” Brian.

I like cheese, but cheese doesn’t always like me.

Does it ruin the value of the red wine if you have it with a rare steak?

If you enjoy it then nothing is ruined.

True, nobody lives forever.

Oh c’mon it totally counts.

If you’re lucky, it’s the whey protein concentrate that’s the magic ingredient.

Wunderbar. Keep your melted cheese pot though, I’ll take it on a wood cutting board.

Or hooked up right to me veins!

To each their own. Cheese and booze for everyone!