Overview
- Researchers reporting in Nutrients followed about 8,000 Japanese adults for three years and found a 24% lower hazard of dementia among people who ate cheese at least once a week.
- Dementia developed in 3.39% of weekly cheese consumers versus 4.45% of non-consumers, a difference of roughly 1.06 percentage points.
- The association remained after adjustments for diet, income, education, and other measured confounders.
- Most participants who ate cheese did so one to two times per week, and processed cheese constituted 82.7% of reported intake.
- The authors suggested nutrient-based mechanisms and noted diagnoses occurred about seven days later in cheese eaters, while calling for replication before any dietary recommendations.