Newsflash: According to a brand-new study, ‘high cheese’ isn’t just for fastballs anymore. Now it’s the latest recommendation to protect against the ill effects of diets too high in sodium.
If you want to induce confusion, anxiety and occasionally even anger in friends, family and co-workers, there’s an easy way to do it.
Why one would be motivated to do that is problematic, but nevertheless, should you be so inclined, just start a discussion of the “right” kind of diet that’s best for maintaining good health.
There’s an old saying that if you want to maintain your friendships, never discuss religion or politics. You could — and should — add “diet” to that off-limits list.
That’s because we have strong connections to the foods we love, and even stronger feelings about the ones we loathe.
Just ask a committed veggie at the company picnic if they’d like to share a cheeseburger with you. Their reaction will be similar to what you’d get if you wondered aloud whether it’s okay for toddlers to play in the street — you know, so they learn how to dodge oncoming cars and trucks.
The other issue that makes diet such a four-letter word is the utter lack of anything remotely resembling a consensus about which foods are healthy, and which ones we’re supposed to merely “sample.” As part of a well-balanced meal, of course.
Take cheese, truly a love-it-or-leave-it food. Vegans skewer its alleged contribution to every nutrition-related disease imaginable, not to mention that it’s sourced from exploited animals.
Then again, vegans would condemn the Fountain of Youth if they found out it doubled as a watering trough for cattle.
Mainstream dieticians, on the other hand, are generally conflicted about the propriety of eating cheese. They acknowledge its contribution to encouraging adequate calcium intake, but they wring their hands (literally) when noting that cheese contains … gasp! … FAT!
So, to cut to the chase (not the cheese): Should people consume this dairy-derived delicacy? To paraphrase the typical dietician’s response: “If necessary, yes — but only the low-fat, light, lean variety, and only in moderation … as part of a balanced meal.” And, I would add, although this part’s rarely verbalized, only with the proper mix of trepidation and guilt as those fat calories ratchet up toward triple digits.
Eat cheese if you must. Just treat it like the sinful temptation it is.
The fight against demon salt
So, remember a few paragraphs earlier, the part about creating confusion when discussing food choices? Well, a new study, done by respected researchers and published in a peer-reviewed journal, is suggesting that eating cheese isn’t bad. In fact, it can protect against the ill effects of a diet overloaded with that other four-letter word: salt.
Now, truthfully, when it comes to the 11th element on the Periodic Table, we Americans consume inordinate amounts of sodium, mainly because we prefer processed foods, high-salt snacks and regular super-sized servings of whatever’s on our favorite fast-food menuboard.
As a result of those dietary transgressions, nutritional authorities can’t get enough of the sermonizing about the need to cut down on sodium intake, especially when one is saddled with high blood pressure, obesity and/or some combination of the clinical consequences of those lifestyle disorders.
But thanks to a group of researchers at Penn State University, whose study on the prophylactic effects of “high-dairy cheese” on cardiovascular health was just published in the Journal of Nutrition, cheese — even though most varieties are naturally loaded with sodium — is now considered the good guy, the dietary white (or yellow, depending on the variety) knight that can rescue us poor, hypertensive peons from a horrible demise due to a heart attack, a stroke or worse.
That’s right: eating cheese is good for heart health.
Who knew?
Of course, the good professors at Penn State conducted their research on only 11 subjects, none of whom suffered from high blood pressure. Nevertheless, they meticulously compared the data from four different dietary interventions:
- A low-sodium, no-dairy diet
- A low-sodium, high-cheese diet
- A high-sodium, no-dairy diet
- A high-sodium, high-cheese diet
(I know which one I’d prefer, but that’s not how these randomized trials work).
Conclusion: the high-cheese diet did its job, according to the published results.
“While excess dietary sodium impairs vascular function by increasing oxidative stress, the dietary incorporation of dairy foods improves vascular health,” the researchers concluded. “We demonstrated that single-meal cheese consumption ameliorates acute, sodium-induced endothelial dysfunction.”
In laymen’s terms, cheese — good old high-fat cheese — appears to protect against the damage and deterioration of blood vessels typically experienced by hypertensive patients.
Of course, clinical researchers never deal in certainties, since “suggested results” or “preliminary recommendations” always tee up the need for further funding to conduct additional studies. That said, the authors’ conclusion is about as close as you’ll ever get to an actual dietary prescription:
“Consuming sodium in cheese, rather than in nondairy sources of sodium, may be an effective strategy to reduce cardiovascular disease risk in salt-insensitive, older adults.”
Just don’t roll out that notion to some veggie-loving colleagues at your next office party.
You’ll definitely raise their blood pressure to unhealthy levels.
The opinions this commentary are those of Dan Murphy, an award-winning journalist and commentator.
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