{"id":400627,"date":"2025-11-24T05:10:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T05:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/400627\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T05:10:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T05:10:14","slug":"a-taste-for-cheese-may-reveal-your-future-risk-of-dementia-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/400627\/","title":{"rendered":"A Taste For Cheese May Reveal Your Future Risk of Dementia : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

We don’t yet have a cure for dementia, but we do have a growing list of factors that may influence risk \u2013 including exercise<\/a>, diet<\/a>, drinking<\/a>, social circles<\/a>, and even how you listen to music<\/a> \u2013 and we can now add eating cheese.<\/p>\n

In a study commissioned by Japanese food company Meiji Co., researchers in Japan crunched the numbers on 7,914 people aged 65 or over. Half reported eating cheese<\/a> at least once a week, while half said they didn’t eat it at all.<\/p>\n

The health of these participants was tracked for three years. Of the cheese-eating group, 134 people developed dementia<\/a> (3.4 percent); among cheese abstainers, 176 developed dementia (4.5 percent). That’s a difference of around 10 or 11 extra cases in every 1,000 people.<\/p>\n

Related: 117-Year-Old Woman’s Diet Could Help Us All Live Longer<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

While that’s not a huge variation, and shows an association rather than cause and effect, it adds to what we already know<\/a> about diet and dementia<\/a> \u2013 and how eating habits relate to physical and mental health<\/a> in general.<\/p>\n

“These findings are consistent with prior observational evidence linking dairy intake to cognitive health,” Seungwon Jeong, a geriatrics researcher at Niimi University in Japan, and colleagues write<\/a> in their published paper.<\/p>\n

“Although the effect for each person is modest, at a population scale, especially in countries [like Japan] with low cheese intake, such differences could contribute meaningfully to dementia prevention strategies.”<\/p>\n

\"DementiaDementia diagnoses were more common among people who rarely or never ate cheese, but only slightly. (Jeong et al., Nutrients, 2025)<\/p>\n

The researchers accounted for several factors that can influence dementia risk, including age, sex, education level, and income.<\/p>\n

In a secondary analysis, they also controlled for healthy eating<\/a>: Cheese abstainers tended to have less healthy diets, which might contribute to the link. The association was less strong in this analysis, but was still significant.<\/p>\n

In other words, there seems to be something about cheese in particular that can prevent dementia from developing, aside from the beneficial effects we know that a nutritious diet<\/a> can have. This isn’t something the researchers looked at specifically, but past studies offer some clues as to what might be going on here.<\/p>\n

Cheese contains nutrients known to help brain health, for example, including vitamin K<\/a>. It’s also rich in beneficial bacteria for the gut, and plenty of earlier research has found a connection between gut health and dementia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There’s also strong evidence that fermented dairy foods like cheese are good for the heart<\/a>, and heart health is something that has long been thought to be important<\/a> in dementia risk. As usual with dementia, there are likely many different contributors acting together.<\/p>\n

\"Subscribe<\/a><\/p>\n

“Although the present study did not include biomarker or mechanistic assessments, several nutritional characteristics of cheese may provide a plausible explanation for the observed association,” write<\/a> the researchers.<\/p>\n

Dementia has been declared a key public health priority<\/a> by the United Nations, and it’s thought that at least 50 million people<\/a> are currently living with the condition worldwide. That’s likely to increase as the population ages, which is a particular concern in Japan, where the research was carried out.<\/p>\n

Related: Strange Rocks Clinging to Mummies Could Be World’s Oldest Cheese<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The statistics certainly aren’t strong enough to suggest a regular cheesy snack is guaranteed to ward off dementia<\/a>, but the indications are that it could help. The researchers are keen to expand their work to learn more.<\/p>\n

“Further research is warranted to clarify dose-response relationships, cheese subtypes, and underlying mechanisms,” write<\/a> the researchers.<\/p>\n

The research has been published in Nutrients<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We don’t yet have a cure for dementia, but we do have a growing list of factors that…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":400628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[210,352,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-400627","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-msft-content","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115602957509072978","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}