Cheese lovers, rejoice: High-fat cheese may be good for you
[Photo: Flickr/Jessica Spengler]
When you go to the supermarket nowadays, you can expect to see a low-fat version of almost any cheese you want, from mascarpone to mozzarella.
But according to a new study, it’s time to get munching on those fatty cheese products instead, as they’re actually good for our health.
Scientists in the US studied how a diet including high-fat cheese affects our cholesterol, and found that people who consumed it on a daily basis had increased levels of ‘good’ cholesterol, but regular levels of ‘bad’ cholesterol.
[Photo: Pexels]
For 12 weeks, researchers from the University of Copenhagen split 100 people into three groups, monitoring their eating patterns.
Group one ate 80g of normal high-fat cheese every day, the second group ate 80g of reduced-fat cheese every day and the third group didn’t include any cheese in their diet.
And the scientists concluded that eating cheese didn’t affect the volunteers’ levels of ‘bad’ cholesterol - low-density lipoprotein (LDL) - which is linked to heart disease.
[Photo: Giphy/NBC]
Importantly, they also found that people who ate regular high-fat cheese had higher levels of ‘good’ cholesterol (high-density lipoprotein or HDL) than the people in the other two groups
HDL or ‘good’ cholesterol is considered to be so as it carries cholesterol away from the cells and back to the liver, to be broken down or passed out of the body as waste.
In other words, it’s good for your health - so let’s crack open the Brie, shall we?
