Rejoice! Cheese Isn’t Bad For You After All

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The dairy industry has a billion pound problem with its massive cheese surplus. And Americans are increasingly turning away from the salty, fatty goodness of cheese, which amplifies the issue. The good news? We might soon be able to get back on the nacho train, now that it turns out cheese is not actually that bad for us.

To be clear, it’s not a health tonic, according to the study. What the researchers at the University of Texas School of Public Health are saying, as explained by The Atlantic, is that it doesn’t seem to be a problem:

An analysis of 2,907 adults found that people with higher and lower levels of dairy fats in their blood had the same rate of death during a 22-year period. The implication is that it didn’t matter if people drank whole or skim or 2-percent milk, ate butter versus margarine, etc. The researchers concluded that dairy-fat consumption later in life “does not significantly influence total mortality.”

This is part of an overall trend that’s helping clear saturated fats, or at least saturated fats from natural sources, of the murder charges against them. While frying breaded cheese in canola oil is probably still a bad idea, the problem doesn’t appear to be the cheese itself. Granted, “Eh, it’s not going to kill you any harder than any other of your dietary habits” isn’t the most ringing endorsement but it beats “Eating gruyere will murder your heart.”

As always, we do need to apply a little common sense here. All this says is that if you’d prefer butter to your margarine, go ahead, not start melting it and having a cup every day. Overall, it appears dietary advice leans hard towards eating more veggies and keeping fats as a relatively low part of the calories you consume. But on the bright side, if you’ve been missing cheese as a snack, you’ve finally got some science to argue a few slices won’t kill you, and hey, it’s better than those off-brand fake-cheese puffs.

Meanwhile, at the Uproxx offices…

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(via The Atlantic)

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