Why No Cheese?

When we discuss the distinctions between the MIND diet and the Mediterranean diet, the topic of cheese, stick butter, and stick margarine comes up. They are not allowed in the MIND diet. When I speak about this, I might hear a groan from the audience. But what’s wrong with enjoying these common foods? 

The issue was identified by the late Dr. Martha Clare Morris in the longitudinal studies she and her team conducted that led to the development of the MIND diet. She saw a correlation between consumption of these foods and the development of Alzheimer’s disease. And so they were tagged as bad. So that’s correlation. But what does that tell us about causation? 

When asked about causation, dietitians usually point to the saturated fat content of these products. But I’m not sure we know that’s the case. According to some recent research, the story may have more to do with a negative effect that cheese has on the gut microbiome. In fact, while cheese may kill off some beneficial microbes, other dairy products may benefit the microbiome. Quite a paradox. 

In understanding why this might be relevant to our interest in Alzheimer’s disease, we need to recall the mystery of the gut-brain axis. There is some kind of communication between the gut microbiome and the brain, and the brain is in some ways actually controlled by the gut microbiome. The gut is sometimes called “the second brain.” How does that work? If you find out, please let me know! Nevertheless, we associate a healthy gut microbiome with a healthy brain. Eating fermented foods, like sauerkraut and kimchi, are probiotic and are associated with better brain health, because they replenish important bacteria and archaea which may have died at the hands of antibiotics and artificial sweeteners. And, perhaps, cheese. 

The research in question was published in the journal, Nutrients. It studied a relatively small cohort of older men but led to some interesting conclusions. Essentially, dairy, in general, is probiotic and increased the population of beneficial bacteria and archaea in the gut. So dairy is generally good. But cheese, on the other hand, decreased the population of beneficial microbes. Surprisingly, yogurt seemed to be neutral. Yogurt contains some microbes important to a healthy gut, but they may all get destroyed by the digestive juices in the stomach. Or so some believe. On the other hand, older men don’t eat much yogurt, so this may have been the wrong population to use for studying yogurt. (I guess I’m an exception, since I consume plenty of yogurt – mixed with blueberries, walnuts, and monkfruit sweetener.) 

So I’ll speculate. It may well be that saturated fat in butter and cheese is directly detrimental to the brain, promoting the development of Alzheimer’s disease. But also, it may be that the damage to the gut microbiome caused by cheese increased the incidence of Alzheimer’s significantly enough to influence Dr. Morris’s results. 

The research was conducted at Baylor College and involved 34 older men. They basically counted microbes in material taken from their colon mucous and correlated the counts with dairy consumption. Since the study involved such a small population of older men (who didn’t like yogurt) – you guessed it – more research is necessary.

Here's some more, perhaps simpler reading on this.