Cheese, which is rich and creamy, tastes delicious on a cracker, with fresh fruit, or sprinkled on top of a bowl of chilli. The majority of Americans simply love it. The annual per capita consumption is 40 pounds, or slightly more than 1.5 ounces per day. However, when people talk about their fondness for cheese, it’s often in a guilty way, as in, “Cheese is my weakness.” Research shows that even full-fat cheese won’t necessarily make you gain weight or give you a heart attack. It seems that cheese doesn’t raise or reduce your risk for chronic diseases, such as heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, and some studies show it might even be protective. Good bacteria, lower saturated fat risks It’s easy to see why people might feel conflicted about cheese. 

For years, the U.S. dietary guidelines have said eating low-fat dairy is best because whole-milk products, such as full-fat cheese, have saturated fat, which can raise LDL (bad) cholesterol levels, a known risk for heart disease. Cheese has also been blamed for weight gain and digestive issues such as bloating. It turns out, though, that cheese may have been misunderstood. Yes, it’s high in calories: Some types have 100 calories or more per ounce. And it’s rich in saturated fat. So why is it okay for most people to eat it? “Cheese is more than its saturated fat content,” said Emma Feeney, an assistant professor at the Institute of Food and Health at University College Dublin who studies the effect cheese has on health.

As a fermented food, “both raw and pasteurized slices of cheese contain good bacteria that can be beneficial to the human gut microbiota,” said researchers. This good bacteria, found mostly in aged cheeses such as cheddar and Gouda, help break down food, synthesize vitamins, prevent bacteria that cause illness from getting a foothold, and bolster immunity. 

Benefits of eating cheese

Weight gain, lactose misunderstandings: Cheese also seems to reduce the risk of weight gain and several chronic diseases. One reason cheese may help control weight is that it may reduce appetite more than other dairy products.

Cardiovascular disease: A large meta-analysis of 15 studies published in the European Journal of Nutrition that looked at cheese’s effect on cardiovascular disease found that people eating the most (1.5 ounces per day) had a 10 percent lower risk than those who didn’t eat any. Other analyses have found that cheese doesn’t seem to affect heart disease risk either way. 

Diabetes and hypertension: Cheese and full-fat dairy also seem to be linked to a lower risk of both. In a study of more than 145,000 people in 21 countries, the researchers found that eating two daily servings of full-fat dairy or a mix of full-fat and low-fat was linked to a 24 and 11 per cent reduced risk of both conditions compared with eating none. Eating only low-fat dairy slightly raised the risk. And among people who didn’t have diabetes or hypertension at the start of the nine-year study, those who ate two servings of dairy each day were less likely to develop the diseases during the study. 

Lactose intolerance: Lactose, a sugar in milk, can be difficult for some people to digest, leading to diarrhoea, bloating and other gastrointestinal symptoms. But the bacteria used to make cheese digests most of the lactose in the milk, says Jamie Png of the American Cheese Society. Much of the lactose that remains is found in the whey, which gets separated from the curds toward the end of the cheesemaking process and is drained off. If you’re sensitive to lactose, stick to hard or aged cheese such as cheddar, provolone, Parmesan, blue, Camembert and Gouda, and minimize fresh soft cheese like ricotta and cottage cheese. 

How much to eat of it Even though cheese itself doesn’t appear to have negative effects on health, how you incorporate it into your overall diet matters. In much of the research suggesting a neutral or beneficial effect, the highest amount of cheese people ate each day, on average, was about 1.5 ounces, but in some cases it was up to 3 ounces. (An ounce of cheese is about the size of your outstretched thumb.)

(With ANI inputs)

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