Overview
- Analysis of 27,670 adults in the Malmö Diet and Cancer cohort found that about 50 g/day of full-fat cheese was associated with a 13% lower risk of dementia over roughly 25 years.
- Daily intake of around 20 g of full-fat cream was linked to a 16% lower risk of all-cause dementia, with the strongest association observed for vascular dementia.
- The Alzheimer’s signal for higher full-fat cheese intake appeared only in participants without the APOE ε4 risk variant.
- Low-fat dairy products showed no clear association, and high butter intake (at least 40 g/day) was tied to higher Alzheimer’s risk in this analysis.
- The findings, published in Neurology, come with limits on diet measurement and generalizability, and a smaller Japanese cohort reporting lower dementia rates among weekly cheese consumers adds supportive but noncausal evidence.