A recent study published by the European Society of Cardiology and cited by NBC News has people looking at toasted brie as if it might be the next fountain of youth. People are especially excited about this passage from the NBC report:
“But most other dairy products, especially cheese and yogurt, were found to protect against both total mortality — death from any cause– and mortality from cerebrovascular causes.”
For Alexandra Petri of the Washington Post this was definitely Gouda news. “YOU WILL NOT EVER GET A GREY HAIR — NOT WHEN YOU HAVE GRUYERE” she writes. And Petri isn’t alone in latching onto the study’s finding that cheese consumption is linked to reduced risk of death from any cause — Cheese Twitter is practically beside itself with the idea that cheese might be the golden pathway to immortality.
Here’s the bad news. What the study ACTUALLY says is “Yet evidence for any such link (between saturated fat in dairy and risk of death from cardiovascular disease), especially among US adults, is inconsistent.”
In other words, dairy is high in saturated fats and saturated fats are bad so therefore dairy should kill you. Only it doesn’t so much. Researchers found that milk is not as bad as they thought (but it’s still a little bad) while a diet rich in cheese or yogurt doesn’t seem to be bad at all.
Here’s the important bit – the study, which is really a study of 29 other studies alongside another large study that contradicts some of the first 29 – is looking at a diet that includes cheese and not at cheese itself. It’s altogether possible that there are other factors. Maybe it’s not even the cheese, maybe it’s the crackers. What if it’s actually the crackers that are good for you?
Shorter NIH: “It’s Confusing”
It’s all so much more complicated than I’m making out. The European Society of Cardiology report seems to have an underlying assumption that the reason dairy products might be bad for you is a high concentration of saturated fats. Yet according to the National Institute of Health there isn’t even a clear link between saturated fat and poor health outcomes. Well there is, but also there’s not.
The NIH report states that consumption of saturated fat (SAFA) “was associated with neither coronary heart disease (CHD) nor stroke mortality nor myocardial infarction.” But it also says “SAFA consumption significantly increases the plasma concentration of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C)…potentially increasing the risk of CHD.”
In the end the NIH holds its hands up and says “IDK” or to quote them more directly “The contrasting findings have challenged current SAFA recommendations, generated vigorous debate, and led to consumer confusion.”
What Does It All Mean Mr. Natural?
If science is so great…and I’m not saying that it isn’t…how is it that we can have so much cheese data at our fingertips and still not know anything?
On the one hand we have this new ESC report that tells us cheese maybe won’t kill us after all. But then you have the Arthritis Foundation announcing that cheese, and it’s near cousin pizza, is particularly bad for inflammation. Health food sites like Purple Carrot toss about research saying you need to dump all your cheese and eat fake cheese instead while a team of researchers from the possibly Borg-inspired Lycotec have found that Roquefort cheese is positively hell on wheels at fighting inflammation. You may not gain immortality, but you will at least live as long as a Frenchman.
Also Swiss cheese is good.
Oh…wait a second. Nevermind. It’s bad.
I give up. I’m going back to bed. (Please don’t tell me napping is bad now.)
