New Research: Full-Fat Cheese is Healthier for You

How many of you stop by the cheese aisle in the supermarket looking for the lowest-fat cheese? Or at least the one that contains a maximum of five percent fat? If you feel compelled to choose low-fat cheeses, new research brings encouraging news for you: full-fat cheese, it turns out, is not harmful to your health at all.

To examine how eating full-fat cheese affects the body compared to eating low-fat cheese, researchers divided 139 participants into three groups. One group ate 2.5 servings daily of hard and semi-hard cheese, another ate the same amount but from low-fat cheese, while a third group did not eat cheese at all and instead consumed toast with jam. After the 12-week study, epidemiological tests were conducted on the participants, examining, among other things, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, waist circumference, blood insulin, glucose, and more.

The results: Those who ate full-fat cheese did not gain more weight than those who ate low-fat cheese. Moreover, those who consumed full-fat cheese experienced an increase in their 'good' cholesterol (LDH) levels, an increase not observed in the low-fat cheese group. The researchers therefore conclude that if you want to eat cheese, full-fat cheese is actually the healthier option. Good cholesterol helps protect against cardiovascular diseases and metabolic disorders.

These surprising findings are similar to a previous study that found that whole milk is healthier than low-fat milk.