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. The researchers analysed the dietary habits of more than 27,000 people and linked these to the occurrence of dementia over a follow-up period of up to 25 years.
The debate about low-fat diets has long shaped our health advice and influenced how we view food and health. For several decades, fear of saturated fat and its link to cardiovascular disease has dominated. The MIND diet1 is a diet developed with the aim of reducing the risk of dementia. The diet includes protective foods such as vegetables, nuts, fruits, berries, whole grains, and fish, while cheese is one of the foods that should be limited.
Emily Sonestedt, researcher in nutritional epidemiology at Lund University in Sweden, and her colleagues therefore wanted to investigate whether there was any link between dairy products and dementia. They collected dietary data from 27,670 people using the Malmö Diet Cancer population study, in which the participants replies about their dietary and cooking habits. The average age at the start of the study was 58, and the participants were followed for an average of 25 years, during which time 3,208 people developed dementia. The dementia diagnoses were obtained from the Swedish patient registry. For cases diagnosed up to 2014, additional validation studies were conducted in which dementia specialists reviewed medical records, brain scans, and cognitive test results.
After adjusting for lifestyle factors such as physical activity, 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 than those who ate less than 15 grams daily. 50 grams is equivalent to about five regular slices of cheese. In total, about a quarter of the participants ate more than 50 grams or more daily.
"When we went on to look at specific types of dementia, we found that there was a 29 percent lower risk of vascular dementia in 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."
The researchers also investigated the link between high-fat cream (30-40 percent fat) and dementia. People who consumed 20 grams or more daily had a 16 percent lower risk of dementia than those who did not consume any at all.
The results of the cheese studies support the link between vascular health and brain health.
"The updated dietary guidelines in Sweden from this year say that we can eat dairy products every day, preferably fermented varieties such as yogurt or kefir. Both we and other researchers have found in observational studies that fermented dairy products in particular may be linked to a slightly reduced risk of cardiovascular disease 2," says Emily Sonestedt.
In previous studies3, the research team has seen links to vascular health, with cheese and fermented dairy products in particular protecting against cardiovascular disease.
"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. Therefore, 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 investigate whether certain high-fat dairy products really do provide some protection for the brain."
- The MIND diet stands for Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay - a combination of the Mediterranean diet and the DASH diet. DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) is a diet developed primarily to lower high blood pressure and improve cardiovascular health.
- Milk and dairy products - a scoping review for Nordic Nutrition Recommendations 2023
- Previous publications:
High-fat and low-fat fermented milk and cheese intake, proteomic signatures, and risk of all-cause and cause-specific mortality
High consumption of dairy products and risk of major adverse coronary events and stroke in a Swedish population
Dairy products and its association with incidence of cardiovascular disease: the Malmö diet and cancer cohort
Dairy Consumption, Lactase Persistence, and Mortality Risk in a Cohort From Southern Sweden
