Your favorite snack might be doing more than satisfying your cravings.
New research from Sweden suggests that regularly enjoying a popular food Americans have long been told to limit could actually help lower the risk of dementia.
But don’t go reaching for the low-fat version — the brain-boosting benefits don’t appear to carry over.
The study focused on high-fat cheeses, which contain more than 20% fat and include varieties like cheddar, Brie and Gouda. It also looked at high-fat creams, which typically contain 30% to 40% fat and include whipping cream, double cream and clotted cream.
“For decades, the debate over high-fat versus low-fat diets has shaped health advice, sometimes even categorizing cheese as an unhealthy food to limit,” Dr. Emily Sonestedt, a nutritional epidemiologist at Lund University and the study’s lead author, said in a press release.
“Our study found that some high-fat dairy products may actually lower the risk of dementia, challenging some long-held assumptions about fat and brain health,” she added.
Sonestedt and her colleagues followed 27,670 Swedes, who were 58 years old on average at the start, for 25 years. During that time, 3,208 participants developed dementia.
At the beginning of the study, the participants detailed their weekly diets and answered questions about how often they consumed certain foods and how they prepared them.
The researchers then compared people who ate 50 grams or more of high-fat cheese daily — roughly a third of a cup — to those who ate less than 15 grams per day.
They found that participants who ate more high-fat cheese had a 13% lower risk of developing dementia compared with those who ate less.
They also had a 29% lower risk of being diagnosed with vascular dementia, a common form of the disease caused by conditions that block or reduce blood flow to the brain, such as stroke, which deprives brain tissue of oxygen and nutrients.
Participants who ate more high-fat cheese also had a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s, but only among those who did not carry the APOE e4 gene variant, a known genetic risk factor for the disease.
The team also compared people who consumed 20 grams or more of high-fat cream daily with those who consumed none. After similar adjustments, daily consumers of high-fat cream had a 16% lower risk of dementia.
No link was found between dementia risk and intake of low-fat cheese, low-fat cream, high- or low-fat milk, butter or fermented milk products such as yogurt, kefir and buttermilk.
“These findings suggest that when it comes to brain health not all dairy is equal,” Sonestedt said. “While eating more high-fat cheese and cream was linked to a reduced risk of dementia, other dairy products and low-fat alternatives did not show the same effect.”
Sonestedt told ABC News that high-fat cheese and cream may benefit the brain because of their nutritional makeup and the way people typically eat them.
“Cheese is fermented, which produces bioactive compounds that may influence inflammation and blood vessels,” she explained.
“Cream is usually used in home-cooked meals, not consumed in large quantities on its own,” Sonestedt continued. “Milk intake, on the other hand, varies more across diet patterns and doesn’t have the same fermentation process.”
There are other benefits, too.
“Many beneficial vitamins reside in full fat cheese, including A, K2, D (which are fat soluble), B12, folate, but also iodine, zinc and selenium which can all support brain health,” Dr. Eef Hogervorst, a professor of biological psychology at Loughborough University, who was not involved in the study, said in a statement.
But you might not want to chow down on a whole block of cheddar just yet.
“While these are interesting data, this type of study cannot determine whether the reduced risk of dementia was actually caused by differences in cheese consumption,” Professor Tara Spires-Jones, division lead at the UK Dementia Research Institute, who was not involved in the study, said in a statement.
One of the study’s biggest limitations, she explained, is that participants’ cheese consumption was recorded in a food diary and interview conducted long before the researchers analyzed dementia diagnoses.
“It is highly likely that diet and other lifestyle factors changed in those 25 years,” Spires-Jones said.
The participants were also all from Sweden, so the results may not apply to broader populations. For instance, cheese in Sweden is often eaten raw, whereas in the US, it’s typically consumed after being heated or paired with meat.
“More research is needed to confirm our study results and to further explore whether consuming certain high-fat dairy products truly offers some level of protection for the brain,” Sonestedt said.
The findings come as dementia rates rise in the US, with studies suggesting that 42% of Americans will develop the memory-robbing disease after age 55.
Nationwide, the number of new dementia diagnoses each year is projected to reach 1 million by 2060 — double the number in 2020 — as the population continues to age.
“We already know of several well-established and proven factors that reduce dementia risk, such as maintaining healthy blood pressure, managing weight, and preventing heart disease or stroke,” Dr. Naveed Sattar, a professor of cardiometabolic medicine at the University of Glasgow, who was not involved in the study, said in a statement.
“These interventions should remain the priority, given their strong evidence base, rather than focusing on unproven dietary associations.”
