The Shocking Health Benefits of Eating Cheese

For many of us, cheese is basically a naughty pleasure. Like, it’s not as bad as outright junk food, but everyone knows that too much cheese can be bad for the body. Therefore, we generally try to avoid eating much of it and try to obscure our nightly dairy habit…that way, nobody knows what a cheddar goblin we become when the rest of the house has gone to sleep!

What if cheese wasn’t naughty, though? What if it were downright nice in the health benefits it provides those who eat it? According to an ambitious new study, that might just be the case. So buckle in and grab a slice as we dive into the shocking health benefits of eating cheese!

Cheese has an unhealthy reputation

You don’t have to be a health nut to know that cheese has a reputation as a relatively unhealthy food. Where did that reputation really come from, though? It sometimes stems from the rare causes where people eat cheese and contract listeria. Most of the time, though, cheese is considered bad for you because of what happens when you eat too much of it.

For example, the food is high in calories, so eating too many slices at night can start affecting your waistline. And you’re likely to eat too much because cheese is low in fiber, meaning that you won’t feel very full after eating. Throw in the fact that cheese is also high in saturated fat and salt, and you can see why it’s not exactly the first thing a healthy eater reaches for in the fridge. 

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A groundbreaking new study

Recently, there has been a study that might just change cheese’s reputation as an unhealthy food. Of course, the research in question wasn’t designed to focus on cheese…at least, not exclusively. The study published in Nature Human Behavior instead focused primarily on the relationship between a healthy mind and a healthy body.

That relationship might sound obvious, but consider this: most of the time, we consider healthy aging to be tied entirely to what we do (or don’t do) with our bodies, including our diet. The new study considers that diet and other factors may actually have an outsized effect on our mental health that, in turn, helps us physically age better.

And one of those diet factors? You guessed it: cheese!

Mind, body, and…cheese?

If you’ve got a good head for scientific research, we suggest you check the study out for yourself. If not, here’s some good news: the basic idea behind the study isn’t as complex as you might think. Basically, researchers considered that having better mental well-being will help someone have better physical well-being. They set out to prove this connection and to isolate the different things that might improve someone’s sense of well-being.

Where does cheese come into play, you ask? It turns out this little dairy delight does more than taste good. Cheese actually provides people with a better sense of well-being as well as a longer lifespan. This is, of course, remarkable news for anyone who has always dismissed cheese as being very bad for their health. But it’s particularly good news for current cheese lovers who now know they eating their favorite snack can help them lead a longer and happier life.

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The importance of cheese by the numbers

If you read a lot of health articles, it’s easy to get discouraged by how vague everything is. For example, you may read that eating something has a major health benefit, but the article won’t specify how much of a benefit you can expect. The researchers behind this mind/body study aren’t like that, though. They provided a detailed breakdown of just about everything, including a by-the-numbers breakdown of how good cheese is for you.

According to the study, those who ate cheese experienced a 3.67 percent positive impact on health and lifespan. This is actually much better than eating fruit, which only had a 1.96 percent positive impact. For some study participants, the good helped to balance out the bad. Healthy eating is that much more important, for example, for smokers, whose cigarette habit causes a 4.56 percent negative impact.

Moderation: the key to enjoying cheese

Right now, cheese probably seems like a paradox. After all, it has some major health benefits and can help you live a longer, happier life. But it’s still a low-fiber, high-calorie food with plenty of salt and saturated fat, so chowing down on too much of this can actually hurt your health.

How do you square this circle? The answer is moderation. It’s possible to enjoy the occasional cheese slice or added cheese without devouring an entire block of cheddar each night. If you play your cheesy cards right, you can enjoy this awesome snack in moderation each night, receiving all of the benefits and none of the drawbacks!

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