Cheese is unhealthy
Think cheese is a health food? It is one of the unhealthiest foods we can eat. Cheese is extremely highly processed. Cheese is 70% of calories from fat, most of it is saturated fat which is the worst kind, and loaded with salt.1 It makes us fat and sick with heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease. Unfortunately, the casein protein, fat, and salt in cheese make it addictive so it is hard to convince people to give it up.
Cheese is unnatural
Highly processed cheese is unnatural and starts as grass that a cow eats and processes in its multiple stomachs. Milk, containing the estrogens, antibiotics, and recycled dead cow meal the cow ate is put in a vat with large amounts of salt and bacteria. Different bacteria are used to process different cheeses. Brevi bacteria that covers the human body contributing to body odor is used in some cheeses like Munster, Limburger, and Port-du-Salut, giving them the odor of old gym socks. Think about going back to your mother for breast milk after you have been weaned or to a foreign species like a dog or cow.
Cheese makes you fat
Cheese is a major contributor to overweight and obesity because it is a condensed form of milk which is also fattening. One cup of milk contains almost 150 calories while the same amount of cheese contains almost 1000 calories. A single slice of pizza may contain 272 calories which is approximately one-fourth of the calories a person should eat all day.2
Cheese causes heart attacks
The excess fat and cholesterol in cheese contribute to atherosclerosis, heart disease, our number one killer. A one-ounce slice of cheese contains 30 mg of cholesterol and 9 grams of fat (81 calories).2 Because your body makes all the cholesterol it needs there is no need to eat more. While there was a temporary debate about the efficacy of cholesterol by the food industry, a large dominant body of research shows cholesterol is a primary cause of heart disease forming plaques in artery walls that break and block blood flow resulting in heart attacks and strokes.3
Cancer
Being overweight is associated with cancer, our number two killer. IGF1, a growth hormone in dairy designed to make a 60 lb. calf grow rapidly to a 1600 lb. cow may create cancer cell growth in humans.4
Diabetes
With 2/3rds of Americans overweight and over 1/3rd obese, diabetes has become a pandemic. Type 2 Diabetes is associated with excess fat in the blood caused by eating fatty foods like cheese.5 The excess blood fat stops sugar from entering muscle cells resulting in excess blood sugar, called insulin resistance.6 High blood sugar damages organs and blocks blood flow that may result in leg amputation, blindness, and coronary heart disease.
Alzheimer’s disease
If all this weren’t enough, Alzheimer’s disease is also associated with excess cholesterol flowing in the blood. Amyloid plaque related to cholesterol in the blood has been implicated as a primary cause of this dreaded disease that destroys a person’s mind.7
Cheese addiction
It is a wonder that anyone eats cheese given all these detrimental effects. The answer lies in its addictive qualities. Casein, the primary dairy protein, creates casomorphins that operate with the same opiate receptors as hard drugs. These, along with the attraction to fat and salt may result in a strong physical dependency on cheese. Fortunately, there are non-dairy cheese alternatives, often made from cashews that help overcome cheese dependency. For an extensive analysis of cheese including delicious recipes with substitutes for cheese read Neal Barnard MD’s book The Cheese Trap.8
Cheese is not an immediate acute poison like arsenic but it may do a great deal of chronic damage in the long run and is not healthy any time.
1. Barnard, N. Cheese and Obesity. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. https://www.pcrm.org/news/blog/cheese-and-obesity. Accessed June 7, 2020.
2. UCSF Health. Cholesterol Content of Food. https://www.ucsfhealth.org/education/cholesterol-content-of-foods. Accessed June 7, 2020.
3. Mayo Clinic. High Cholesterol. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditio 1990;336:129-33.ns/high-blood-cholesterol/symptoms-causes/syc-20350800. Accessed June 7, 2020.
4. Ornish D, Brown SE, Scherwitz LW, Billings JH, Armstrong WT, Ports TA, et al. Can lifestyle changes reverse coronary heart disease? Lancet. 1990;336:129-33.
5. Roden M, Price TB, Perseghin G, Falk-Petersen K, Cline GW, Rothman DL, Schulman GI. Mechanism of free fatty acid-induced insulin resistance in humans. J Clin Invest. 1996;97:2859-65.
6. Hirabara SM, Curi R, Maechler P. Saturated fatty acid-induced insulin resistance is associated with mitochondrial dysfunction in skeletal muscle cells. J Cell Physioil. 2010;222:187-94.
7. Solomon A, Kivipelto M, Wolozin B, Zhou J, Whitmer RA. Midlife serum cholesterol and increased risk of Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia three decades later. Dement Geriatr Cogn Disord. 2009;28:75–80.
8. Barnard ND. The Cheese Trap. New York, NY: Grand Central Lifestyle; 2017.
