Eating cheese and cream with a high fat content may be linked to a lower risk of developing dementia. This is shown by a new large-scale study from Lund University, published in December.
The debate about low-fat diets has long shaped health advice and influenced how we view food and health. But Emily Sonestedt, a researcher in nutritional epidemiology at Lund University in Sweden, and her colleagues wanted to investigate whether there was any positive link between dairy products and dementia.
The researchers collected dietary data from 27,670 people using the Malmö Diet Cancer population study, in which participants reported their dietary and cooking habits. The average age at the start of the study was 58, and participants were followed for an average of 25 years. During this period, 3,208 people developed dementia. Dementia diagnoses were obtained from the Swedish patient registry.
After adjusting for lifestyle factors such as physical activity, overall diet, smoking, and alcohol consumption, the researchers found that people who ate 50 grams of cheese (with more than 20 percent fat) daily had a 13 percent lower risk of developing dementia compared with those who ate less than 15 grams per day. Fifty grams is equivalent to about five regular slices of cheese.
- When we went on to look at specific types of dementia, we found a 29 percent lower risk of vascular dementia among people who ate more full-fat cheese. We also saw a lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease, but only among those who did not carry the APOE e4 gene variant—a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, says Emily Sonestedt in an article on Lund University’s website.
The researchers also investigated the link between high-fat cream and dementia. People who consumed 20 grams or more per day had a 16 percent lower risk of dementia compared with those who did not consume cream at all.
- Although higher-fat cheese and cream were associated with a reduced risk of dementia, other dairy products and low-fat alternatives did not show the same effect. This suggests that not all dairy products are equal when it comes to brain health. The few studies that have investigated this have found a correlation with cheese, so more research is needed to confirm our results and to explore whether certain high-fat dairy products really do provide some protection for the brain, Sonestedt says.