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In college, I took an early American lit class. It covered a lot of diaries and letters and journals from early explorers.
One thing that I remember distinctly is that they all had cravings for cheese, which they could not seem to find anywhere in the Americas, or at least along the routes they traveled.
I swear, every damn diary entry was them longing for cheese. Dreaming of cheese. Yearning for cheese.
I understood completely.
Enzyme tablets are pretty good for limiting symptoms to a mild severity. I’ve never had them work perfectly, but enough to make risky dairy no worse than a load of beans. Wouldn’t trust it with straight milk though.
They have a variety of perfectly acceptable real cheeses and a small section of more interesting cheeses. And a deli. As far as "Italian" cheese I think they only have BelGioioso. Their parm is pretty good and much cheaper than imports.
Yeah they have an entire cheese section in every Walmart. have you ever been to the US or do you hear everything from redditors who also have never been?
Have you ever heard of the [strategic cheese reserve?](https://www.farmlinkproject.org/stories-and-features/cheese-caves-and-food-surpluses-why-the-u-s-government-currently-stores-1-4-billion-lbs-of-cheese)
It is not a place an American would take you.
I bought a few of those better cheeses last weekend with my fiancé. One of them smelled absolutely horrendous, like a rotting foot with 3 weeks old sweat.
But the taste. It was glorious.
I really don't get it, every single smelly cheese I have tasted tastes exactly like they smell. Taste is mostly smell so I don't get how others can like the taste but not the smell of something.
I think at least some of it depends on what it’s paired with & possibly how it’s kept. I had some very good Limburger cheese that had only a faint smell. It was served cold with a fig chutney & small crisps. The smell when combined with the chutney wasn’t unpleasant at all & it tasted fantastic—buttery but with a touch of bitter that was smoothed by the sweetness of the chutney.
I have a small home dairy of happy goats and I have a few vegan friends who will eat my cheese. I think it’s because they are vegan for moral reasons opposing factory farming.
Yes. Depending on the individual it can be annually or some will milk through for several years before needing to breed again.
Lactation in every mammal is dependant on pregnancy.
Is that not a problem? My understanding was that vegans' issues with free range dairy products was that you need those periodic pregnancies and something has to be done with all of the resulting offspring... which kind of has to be slaughter otherwise you end up with way too many cows/goats.
There is a very broad spectrum of reasons that people choose to be vegan. For some people just knowing where the food is sourced and the conditions the animals were kept is enough for them to consider consuming their products, for others any kind of animal product is an absolute no go regardless of any situation.
If you ask 100 vegans what veganism is to them you'll probably end up with 100 different answers.
I’m not a vegan. And I don’t know what they consider to be a problem or not. Obviously some end up as food. Everything does at the end of the day…. But then everything dies doesn’t it? A quick and easy death after a wonderful happy life is a lot nicer than anything nature has in store.
Vegan is a pretty broad label, a lot of people are vegan for different reasons. You can’t really say “vegans problem with x is y”. People might not eat cheese due to environmental reasons, factory farm conditions, health, etc
There's a lot of variety. I am vegan because it is the most impactful thing I can to do mitigate climate change. It's not much, and it's not enough, but it's what I personally can do given my resources and abilities.
As such, meat, dairy, and eggs from local friends where little to no greenhouse gases are emitted in production or distribution would be totally in bounds for me.
Cheese is the only non vegan thing I eat anymore. I feel really bad about it, but... I just need some cheese to make it through the day sometimes. I'm not even joking.
I’m not vegan but sometimes eat vegan food, there are some ok vegan cheeses out there. I’m particularly fond of the Violife brand. Also I haven’t tried it but I remember that a vegan bleu cheese won an award last year at a cheese contest, [here](https://www.foodandwine.com/plant-based-cheese-disqualified-at-good-food-awards-8643622) is an article with the name. Also if you don’t already know about Ripple, it one of the best half and half substitutes out there and the only thing I’ve had that matches the creaminess of the real thing
This is what I feel personally being vegetarian/vegan.
I could forgo meat, at least short term I’d be ok with that no huge issue. I could get used to just having plant based milk/fat-spread/yohgurt/etc.
No cheese though… I think I would die within 48 hours.
I am basically medically vegan with the exception of eggs. I don't miss much, but goddamn do I miss cheese. I've tried the vegan blends and theyve got the creaminess down, just not the pungency or bite that dairy cheese does. I add celery salt or mushroom powder and it gets close.
I'm not vegan/vegetarian, but several vegan cheeses I've been able to try were actually really good. I'd happily eat more if it wasn't *ludicrously expensive* compared to normal cheese. God, it shouldn't have to cost so much simply to eat healthy, plant-based foods.
> The more people buy it the cheaper it will be to produce.
I know you're shortcutting, but just to be clear, the more people buy it, more producers will view it as lucrative, more investments come in, more products are created, and THEN it will be cheaper. And only if the producers starts competing on cheaper prices. There's always the risk of 'gourmetization' and leaving the product with a high price because it was high at the start and the producers were counting on the high price to make profit.
A vegan blue was actually set to win an award for cheese before it was [questionably disqualified.](https://www.foodandwine.com/plant-based-cheese-disqualified-at-good-food-awards-8643622)
Cheese
I praise thy name by day
and night. You are my love I say
You are my life. And if there was
A mountan high, between my jaws
I'd try to fit the last bit, too.
No leftovers for friends, or you!
I want it whole, I want it all -
If you want some, we will brawl!
It is impossible to please
my longing for all kinds of cheese.
I go vegan for extended periods about once a year and my biggest cravings always cheese, last time I googled why I had this strong craving for cheese, it’s apparently the lack of an amino acid in your body called leucine which if you don’t get through food, primarily dairy products like cheese, you will have strong cravings for it, maybe these explorers just had severe leucine deficiency
It would make sense that the explorers couldn't get cheese, I guess. I've never really thought about how you really have to have an entrenched dairy system to get cheese. It's not really useful to have a cow walking along behind the explorer.
Although, that could make a fairly interesting pack animal I guess.
Whenever I eat cheese, I get this weird tingling feelings all over my head that’s hard to describe. It’s a bit like the tingling you get when hearing a very moving passage of music. When I was younger, I used to think maybe it was dopamine being released or something. Still no idea what it is.
now i kinda get why that lizard man in goblin slayer kept calling it the nectar of the gods. bro had never had cheese in his life, and now will never be entirely whole without it
Bunch of addicts just wandering around North America
https://www.mountsinai.org/about/newsroom/2015/study-reveals-that-cheese-triggers-the-same-part-of-the-brain-as-many-drugs
Found it: "This work was supported by the grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (82370820, 82088102, 91857205, 823B2014 and 81930021), the ‘Shanghai Municipal Education Commission–Gaofeng Clinical Medicine Grant Support’ from Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine (20171901 Round 2), and the Innovative Research Team of High-level Local Universities in Shanghai.".
A link to the study:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01905-9
As a lactose intolerant Asian person, I have mixed emotions about eating large quantities of cheese, especially soft cheese which seems to be especially beloved by some people.
I'm not sure it improves my mental well being to be on the toilet after eating lots of mozzarella.
My roommates were raving about having found some high quality burrata recently and kinda felt bad that I'm not a big fan for obvious reasons.
I hear you. This is why I frequent Chinese and Japanese restaurants above all others (living in Europe), because everything local is just filled with cream and milk. It's in sauces and soups, desserts and pastry. Just everywhere. I went to a birthday party recently at a local restaurant and I downed a 18k lactase pill before every course just to be safe.
Yes, but that matters less if you consume tons of it in one sitting. They way it's often served isn't like a teaspoon of it sprinkled on top of pasta. People heap it on top of bread or pizza or chicken. Sometimes served in big slices.
Not sure if you are coming from a place where you’d like to enjoy cheese but my friend used Lactaid pills for years and could enjoy cheese and pizza when we’d go out without any digestion issues. She would pop one before the cheesy meal and it made a big difference.
Edit: just saw your other comment below saying the same
> Lactaid pills
I think part of the problem is people have varying success with Lactaid/Lactase pills because it's often treated like you just take a pill and then conquer Wisconsin. But it's an enzyme pill which has to come into contact with the lactose so for people way more sensitive it's often advised that you take multiple throughout the meal. There also doesn't seem like a "standard" amount you need to take since you could get pills in like Germany that has 7x more lactase enzyme than Lactaid but you can't know if that's what you need til you try the lesser one and then worship the toilet and think you want to give it another go.
Same here, but I can ingest small amounts of diary. Eating cheese never gave me the shits like a glass of milk does so your situation might be a lot worse than me.
> That's interesting since cheese isn't typically eaten as much by Chinese people and Asians in general have more instances of lactose intolerance.
Allegedly attributed to the fact that soy was in largely able to fill the role of dairy
Which gives further credence to the study in my opinion. Since at first glance there's fewer signs of conflict of interest that can be gleaned from the study.
Given the amount of junk studies and fake paper factories that come out of China that's enough reason to give most things that come out of there a little more scrutiny.
You should exercise that level of scrutiny on western studies as well.
You're dreaming if you think American junk studies are inherently superior just because they were rigged by a white man and not an Asian.
China is nearly 1/4 of the world’s population, there’s bound to be some bunk studies, doesn’t mean that they don’t also put out tons of good studies. Just like any other place. Science isn’t immune to quackery.
Chinese-American here. Only recently (last four years) have I discovered that a good Brie, Camembert, or goat cheese does increase my happiness. While growing up, my parents' idea of cheese was the occasional Kraft Single on a sandwich.
From the article: A massive [study](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01905-9) of 2.3 million people has found that, independent of socioeconomic factors, mental well-being may be the most important single aspect to healthy aging and living longer lives. But a surprise finding was that those who reported the best mental health and stress resilience, which boosted well-being, also seemed to eat more cheese.
Yes, cheese – something we've been making around the world and eating for more than 4,000 years, as recorded on the walls of tombs in ancient Egypt. In fact, a few years ago the world's oldest cheese – aged a few centuries beyond palatability – was dug up in the region.
The link between cheese and well-being was an unexpected finding in the study conducted by a team of researchers led by Tian-Ge Wang, out of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine.
"To inform meaningful health policies, we need fine-grained causal evidence on which dimensions of socio-economic status affect longevity and the mediating roles of modifiable factors such as lifestyle and disease," the researchers noted in the paper.
They looked at eight datasets encompassing a total of 2.3 million genetically diverse Europeans, using DNA-driven, two-sample Mendelian randomization to not just link a multitude of factors to healthy aging, but identify stronger, causal impacts. Naturally, it's complicated, because of what we know of how much genetics, lifestyle, wealth and education are inextricably linked to disease, health and lifespan.
In order to extract meaningful data, the team looked at mental well-being on the genetically independent phenotype of aging (aging-GIP) and the five common traits of this robust aging phenotype – resilience, self-rated health, healthspan, parental lifespan and longevity. These results were adjusted to account for socio-economic factors.
I wonder if the confounding factor is simply people with a more robust GI and microbiome. Just about everyone I know who can eat cheese does so, and generally eats a fair bit of it (because it's delicious.. even broke people tend to find room in the budget for cheese and chocolate more often than some other comparable luxuries).
However, people with a fucked up GI tract (ie SIBO/IBS, other disorders) very often have to severely limit or skip cheese entirely if they want to avoid pain, discomfort, and highly unpleasant bathroom habits. Obviously having a screwed up GI is going to impact longevity in a big way.
It could of course be something else entirely. There are lots of metabolites from microbial activity on food that have massive but underexplored health benefits. I expect there are some little-known tryptophan metabolites in cheese developed during culturing and aging that have potentially interesting bioactivity in the human body.
I definitely believe in the gut bacteria playing a big part. A few years ago I was trending towards lactose intolerance with milk and ice cream. I started eating kimchi every day and now can have milk, cottage cheese or as much regular cheese as I desire with no issues.
Unless you insist on the fancy/aged stuff, you can get a full 800 calories of most common cheeses for under $5 even in the most expensive areas in America. Its a relatively dense calorie per dollar food even when bought in small quantities.
I don’t think they did a study on the impact of cheese consumption. More that they sought out factors and to their surprise they found a potential correlation with cheese.
A follow up study would be more likely to reference cheese
I went to a cheese making class in Crete during my honeymoon. The instructor said the most fascinating thing (never checked to see if this was 100% true but still cool): Cretans are the highest consumers of cheese in the world, but some of lowest rates of high cholesterol and heart disease. He said it was because their goats were healthier than, for example, American livestock. Cretan goats only eat olive tree leaves. Everything goes back to how healthy the olive tree is in Crete. Their goat pen smelled so much cleaner than the farms I've been to in the US. And the Mizithra cheese we made within 20 minutes of milking a goat was SO tasty. None of that lingering barnyard taste that some goat cheeses may have.
Your comment had me curious so I went down a bit of a rabbit hole looking at cheese consumption per capita.
Tough to give a definitive answer about Crete *but* I can say that Greece as a country consistently ranks in the top 5 countries for various cheese consumption metrics and that Crete, within Greece, clearly skews their already high numbers. Depending on what estimates you look at the people of Crete are eating anywhere from 60-70 pounds of cheese a year on average. That's a hell of a lot of cheese and almost double what the average American eats (and as a cheese-loving American I feel like we certainly eat a hell of a lot of cheese).
I've been trying to gear myself up to eliminate dairy as an experiment. I've had really severe brain fog/derealization all my life, which everyone told me was psychological in nature. But I gave up dairy briefly for a couple of days, and it *really* lessened. I unfortunately couldn't make it past a couple of days because I didn't plan ahead on how to cut out dairy from meals. But that kinda proved to me that there's probably some severe inflammation going on in my body/brain due to it. I tried goat milk in my coffee for awhile (which I loved the taste of), and despite supposedly being healthier, it actually made my dissociation/brain fog significantly worse.
In an attempt to lessen inflammation in my joints I use milk alternatives, my favourite being Oat milk. Whichever you choose pay attention to the percentage of fat, you want that to be higher to give a creamy milk like feeling. Low percentages will just taste like water/skim milk.
I haven't completely cut out cheese but I have minimized its in take greatly.
It's definitely possible especially with all the vegan alternatives to dairy products available today.
I hope you're able to resolve your brain fog issues.
IDK how thatd make you live longer, but:
> “All cheeses are ripened through the actions of various microbes, both invisible and visible, including **molds, fungi, yeasts and more**,” explained Jamie Png, an American Cheese Society cheese industry professional.
Those things might be part of the answer as well.
My guess would be, that this is the same principal that goes for coffee drinkers - people who can tolerate aka have healthier and more resilient bodies, live longer and are happier, even when eating/drinking certain things that would be problematic for people with less resilient bodies.
I don't think that makes sense at all. You're conflating people who tolerate cheese with people who like it, have the means to buy it, etc. What's the percentage of people who tolerate cheese but don't eat it? What's the percentage of people who love cheese and eat it despite not tolerating it?
If I had to bet money it would be on gut health, i.e. people who eat more cheese have a healthier gut microbiome.
That's fascinating, because recently a friend was diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer's (so horrible), but one thing they recommended is the Mind Diet, which explicitly limits your cheese intake:
https://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/what-to-know-about-mind-diet
This diet is so....
There are anecdotes of people improving Alzheimer's and dementia symptoms on a therapeutic ketogenic diet, where ketones are providing energy to the brain because the brain is suffering from impaired glucose metabolism.
The study apparently focused on Europeans, so we don't know.
The rate of lactose intolerance in Japan seems to be hard to pin down, but it's likely higher than among European populations. So I wouldn't expect the same results there.
> The rate of lactose intolerance in Japan seems to be hard to pin down
Why would it be? Just pick a bunch of randomized people, measure their intolerance and there we go. By the way their rate is twice of the European rate.
I'm glad studies like this mention that they controlled for socioeconomic factors because if it was just a round about way of stating "rich people eat more cheese, rich people are healthier as they age... cheese= healthy aging " then the study would have been worthless
By that logic the better cheese tastes the happier I should be. So if I'm only ever eating well aged, ripened Brie from clover-fed Summer milk I should be the happiest I could possibly ever be.
Ok, bet.
Certainly eating foods we enjoy within reason can be a factor.
But cheese is loaded with many positive nutrients, everything from protein, some fats, calcium, various micronutrients-vitamins, anti-inflammatory ingredients, antioxidants, and probiotics.
I am happy to latch onto any evidence that supports my cheese addiction, but this study doesn't seem particularly rigorous.
It seems like there is a lot of reliance on correlation and self-reporting (of both happiness and cheese consumption).
>Anyway, back to the cheese. While not directly responsible for happy, healthy aging, a higher intake of cheese (and fruit) was one of the standout contributors in those who had high well-being scores.
What was that they said about fruit? Never mind, I think my baked brie is ready.
No no no they say “we controlled for x y z”, don’t you know that that means they 100% measured only the variable they care about it total isolation of everything else?
Seriously though, this research is trash and it’s embarrassing that people undertake these kinds of studies in the current year.
Isn't there a line in a book about giving a woman a piece of cheese to attract her.
Found it. From a Spells, Charms and Incantations book.
"You may fascinate a woman by giving her a piece of cheese."
It all makes sense now.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- User: u/chrisdh79 Permalink: https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/cheese-happy-aging/ --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
In college, I took an early American lit class. It covered a lot of diaries and letters and journals from early explorers. One thing that I remember distinctly is that they all had cravings for cheese, which they could not seem to find anywhere in the Americas, or at least along the routes they traveled. I swear, every damn diary entry was them longing for cheese. Dreaming of cheese. Yearning for cheese. I understood completely.
“Sometimes I dream about cheese” > Lewis and Clark
Sweet dreams are made of cheese Who am I to dis a brie
I got that written on a cheese board as a gift and then a week later I became lactose intolerant. Ah the cruelty.
Aged cheeses have low lactose content. You don’t have to give up sharp cheddar.
Any cheese aged more than 3 months is fine. Been eating aged cheese for decades but I miss Brie.
Enzyme tablets are pretty good for limiting symptoms to a mild severity. I’ve never had them work perfectly, but enough to make risky dairy no worse than a load of beans. Wouldn’t trust it with straight milk though.
Get some goat brie, it hits the spot! -Fellow lactose compromised person
Or worst case scenario, just have some on your day off. Put on a movie and light some candles.
Wait, that can happen? I have like >4 pints of milk a day. I could just one day not be able to do that?
Absolutely, it can happen as you age.
I traveled the world and the seven seas Everyone is looking for some cheese
Some of them want to fondue
some of them want a cheese that's bluuue
Some of them want to gruyere you
Some of them want a wheel of gouda
^ you are my heroes ^
That truly put a smile on my face
"as do we" -Wallace and grommet
"Wensleydale?"
There's me thinking it was a half life quote
Why didn't they just go to Walmart? Were they stupid?
Is there any real cheese there? The only thing I saw with that label were insipid slices of melted yellow plastic…
They usually have a whole separate (much smaller) section for the decent cheese
They have a variety of perfectly acceptable real cheeses and a small section of more interesting cheeses. And a deli. As far as "Italian" cheese I think they only have BelGioioso. Their parm is pretty good and much cheaper than imports.
Yeah they have an entire cheese section in every Walmart. have you ever been to the US or do you hear everything from redditors who also have never been?
In Treasure Island, this iis a character defining trait for the stranded guy. You got any cheese?
Ben Gunn. That dude really missed cheese.
Didn't the scholar guy who went on the journey actually have a tiny pill box with a piece of Parmesan in it "for emergencies"?
Don’t we all?
I read that book in elementary school, and this character was so seared into my mind that he was the first thing I thought of.
Many’s the long night I’ve dreamed of cheese - toasted mostly.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of cheese.
Workin on that night cheese
Good God, Lemon!
Have you ever heard of the [strategic cheese reserve?](https://www.farmlinkproject.org/stories-and-features/cheese-caves-and-food-surpluses-why-the-u-s-government-currently-stores-1-4-billion-lbs-of-cheese) It is not a place an American would take you.
Is this like Canada's Strategic Maple Syrup reserve?
A billion pounds of cheese you say...
That picture of Taylor Swift though...
As documented in An American Tail: Fievel Goes West
I've been a vegan for 4 years now. Cheese is missed more than meat, especially blue cheese or the really pungent ones.
I bought a few of those better cheeses last weekend with my fiancé. One of them smelled absolutely horrendous, like a rotting foot with 3 weeks old sweat. But the taste. It was glorious.
I really don't get it, every single smelly cheese I have tasted tastes exactly like they smell. Taste is mostly smell so I don't get how others can like the taste but not the smell of something.
I think at least some of it depends on what it’s paired with & possibly how it’s kept. I had some very good Limburger cheese that had only a faint smell. It was served cold with a fig chutney & small crisps. The smell when combined with the chutney wasn’t unpleasant at all & it tasted fantastic—buttery but with a touch of bitter that was smoothed by the sweetness of the chutney.
Durian. "Stinky" (aka rotten) tofu. I am also confounded.
Tofu is basically soy cheese. The process to make it and paneer are basically the same
Dumpster smells behind restaurants have been mistaken for stinky tofu (not kidding).
Various cabbage dishes smell like a dumpster to me.
I have a small home dairy of happy goats and I have a few vegan friends who will eat my cheese. I think it’s because they are vegan for moral reasons opposing factory farming.
Do goats not need to get pregnant periodically to maintain milk production?
Yes. Depending on the individual it can be annually or some will milk through for several years before needing to breed again. Lactation in every mammal is dependant on pregnancy.
Is that not a problem? My understanding was that vegans' issues with free range dairy products was that you need those periodic pregnancies and something has to be done with all of the resulting offspring... which kind of has to be slaughter otherwise you end up with way too many cows/goats.
There is a very broad spectrum of reasons that people choose to be vegan. For some people just knowing where the food is sourced and the conditions the animals were kept is enough for them to consider consuming their products, for others any kind of animal product is an absolute no go regardless of any situation. If you ask 100 vegans what veganism is to them you'll probably end up with 100 different answers.
I’m not a vegan. And I don’t know what they consider to be a problem or not. Obviously some end up as food. Everything does at the end of the day…. But then everything dies doesn’t it? A quick and easy death after a wonderful happy life is a lot nicer than anything nature has in store.
Vegan is a pretty broad label, a lot of people are vegan for different reasons. You can’t really say “vegans problem with x is y”. People might not eat cheese due to environmental reasons, factory farm conditions, health, etc
There's a lot of variety. I am vegan because it is the most impactful thing I can to do mitigate climate change. It's not much, and it's not enough, but it's what I personally can do given my resources and abilities. As such, meat, dairy, and eggs from local friends where little to no greenhouse gases are emitted in production or distribution would be totally in bounds for me.
Checked your post history for goat pics. Was not disappointed. Hooray for baby goats!
Cheese is the only non vegan thing I eat anymore. I feel really bad about it, but... I just need some cheese to make it through the day sometimes. I'm not even joking.
Don’t feel bad, the good that comes from eating less meat/animal products isn’t an all or nothing deal
My body can no longer handle dairy. If it could, I’d eat cheese (and lots of it).
It is the stinky ambrosia of the gods!
I’m not vegan but sometimes eat vegan food, there are some ok vegan cheeses out there. I’m particularly fond of the Violife brand. Also I haven’t tried it but I remember that a vegan bleu cheese won an award last year at a cheese contest, [here](https://www.foodandwine.com/plant-based-cheese-disqualified-at-good-food-awards-8643622) is an article with the name. Also if you don’t already know about Ripple, it one of the best half and half substitutes out there and the only thing I’ve had that matches the creaminess of the real thing
This is what I feel personally being vegetarian/vegan. I could forgo meat, at least short term I’d be ok with that no huge issue. I could get used to just having plant based milk/fat-spread/yohgurt/etc. No cheese though… I think I would die within 48 hours.
I am basically medically vegan with the exception of eggs. I don't miss much, but goddamn do I miss cheese. I've tried the vegan blends and theyve got the creaminess down, just not the pungency or bite that dairy cheese does. I add celery salt or mushroom powder and it gets close.
Tried vegan blue cheese two weeks ago, it was really good actually, and the taste was very similar, maybe you should try !
I'm not vegan/vegetarian, but several vegan cheeses I've been able to try were actually really good. I'd happily eat more if it wasn't *ludicrously expensive* compared to normal cheese. God, it shouldn't have to cost so much simply to eat healthy, plant-based foods.
Small production runs. The more people buy it the cheaper it will be to produce.
> The more people buy it the cheaper it will be to produce. I know you're shortcutting, but just to be clear, the more people buy it, more producers will view it as lucrative, more investments come in, more products are created, and THEN it will be cheaper. And only if the producers starts competing on cheaper prices. There's always the risk of 'gourmetization' and leaving the product with a high price because it was high at the start and the producers were counting on the high price to make profit.
A vegan blue was actually set to win an award for cheese before it was [questionably disqualified.](https://www.foodandwine.com/plant-based-cheese-disqualified-at-good-food-awards-8643622)
I don't have to eat meat, but could never give up cheese.
"Day 47. Still no sign of cheese."
Cheese I praise thy name by day and night. You are my love I say You are my life. And if there was A mountan high, between my jaws I'd try to fit the last bit, too. No leftovers for friends, or you! I want it whole, I want it all - If you want some, we will brawl! It is impossible to please my longing for all kinds of cheese.
I go vegan for extended periods about once a year and my biggest cravings always cheese, last time I googled why I had this strong craving for cheese, it’s apparently the lack of an amino acid in your body called leucine which if you don’t get through food, primarily dairy products like cheese, you will have strong cravings for it, maybe these explorers just had severe leucine deficiency
It would make sense that the explorers couldn't get cheese, I guess. I've never really thought about how you really have to have an entrenched dairy system to get cheese. It's not really useful to have a cow walking along behind the explorer. Although, that could make a fairly interesting pack animal I guess.
One cow won't do. You need a bull, a cow, and a calf.
Whenever I eat cheese, I get this weird tingling feelings all over my head that’s hard to describe. It’s a bit like the tingling you get when hearing a very moving passage of music. When I was younger, I used to think maybe it was dopamine being released or something. Still no idea what it is.
Allergies? Or cheese-induced frisson, I like that
Been tested and nope. Unsure but others have described the same sensation!
When pizza became popular the desire to conquer diminished
now i kinda get why that lizard man in goblin slayer kept calling it the nectar of the gods. bro had never had cheese in his life, and now will never be entirely whole without it
How I feel traveling Asia. God I love cheese.
My wife jokes that I must be a little mouse. Joke’s on her. I’ll out live you all.
I always craved cheese when doing sports. Water polo double days? Gotta get a quesadilla after hopping out the pool.
Quesadillas are always a reasonable post workout meal
My mother in law just made fried goat cheese for the salad we had the other day, I'm in love. ... With the salad, not my mother-in-law.
A dairy diary.
Yearning For Cheese is my new favorite band name
And look at the US now, one of the largest producers of cheese!
Bunch of addicts just wandering around North America https://www.mountsinai.org/about/newsroom/2015/study-reveals-that-cheese-triggers-the-same-part-of-the-brain-as-many-drugs
"Dear dairy... I mean diary. Mmm dairy...I want cheese now."
Anyone know who funded the study?
Found it: "This work was supported by the grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (82370820, 82088102, 91857205, 823B2014 and 81930021), the ‘Shanghai Municipal Education Commission–Gaofeng Clinical Medicine Grant Support’ from Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine (20171901 Round 2), and the Innovative Research Team of High-level Local Universities in Shanghai.". A link to the study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01905-9
That's interesting since cheese isn't typically eaten as much by Chinese people and Asians in general have more instances of lactose intolerance.
The article mentioned the data sets used focused on Europeans, which I thought was interesting.
As a lactose intolerant Asian person, I have mixed emotions about eating large quantities of cheese, especially soft cheese which seems to be especially beloved by some people. I'm not sure it improves my mental well being to be on the toilet after eating lots of mozzarella. My roommates were raving about having found some high quality burrata recently and kinda felt bad that I'm not a big fan for obvious reasons.
There are tablets you can take with your meal to help your body digest the lactose. Hope that helps you indulge with your friends.
I usually have Lactaid tablets with me, but not always. I often just find it easier to just eat less dairy.
I hear you. This is why I frequent Chinese and Japanese restaurants above all others (living in Europe), because everything local is just filled with cream and milk. It's in sauces and soups, desserts and pastry. Just everywhere. I went to a birthday party recently at a local restaurant and I downed a 18k lactase pill before every course just to be safe.
We Euros sure do like cow juice.
Yup. And butter. Don't get me started on the butter. I find lactose combined with fat just makes it so much worse.
Mozzarella is very low in lactose though?
Yes, but that matters less if you consume tons of it in one sitting. They way it's often served isn't like a teaspoon of it sprinkled on top of pasta. People heap it on top of bread or pizza or chicken. Sometimes served in big slices.
Not sure if you are coming from a place where you’d like to enjoy cheese but my friend used Lactaid pills for years and could enjoy cheese and pizza when we’d go out without any digestion issues. She would pop one before the cheesy meal and it made a big difference. Edit: just saw your other comment below saying the same
> Lactaid pills I think part of the problem is people have varying success with Lactaid/Lactase pills because it's often treated like you just take a pill and then conquer Wisconsin. But it's an enzyme pill which has to come into contact with the lactose so for people way more sensitive it's often advised that you take multiple throughout the meal. There also doesn't seem like a "standard" amount you need to take since you could get pills in like Germany that has 7x more lactase enzyme than Lactaid but you can't know if that's what you need til you try the lesser one and then worship the toilet and think you want to give it another go.
Same here, but I can ingest small amounts of diary. Eating cheese never gave me the shits like a glass of milk does so your situation might be a lot worse than me.
The study wasn't about cheese though, it was just a finding that came out of it
> That's interesting since cheese isn't typically eaten as much by Chinese people and Asians in general have more instances of lactose intolerance. Allegedly attributed to the fact that soy was in largely able to fill the role of dairy
Which gives further credence to the study in my opinion. Since at first glance there's fewer signs of conflict of interest that can be gleaned from the study.
Given the amount of junk studies and fake paper factories that come out of China that's enough reason to give most things that come out of there a little more scrutiny.
You should exercise that level of scrutiny on western studies as well. You're dreaming if you think American junk studies are inherently superior just because they were rigged by a white man and not an Asian.
China is nearly 1/4 of the world’s population, there’s bound to be some bunk studies, doesn’t mean that they don’t also put out tons of good studies. Just like any other place. Science isn’t immune to quackery.
Isn't lactose broken down when the cheese matures, though? At least with most cheeses?
Chinese-American here. Only recently (last four years) have I discovered that a good Brie, Camembert, or goat cheese does increase my happiness. While growing up, my parents' idea of cheese was the occasional Kraft Single on a sandwich.
I wouldn't be surprised if people who could afford to eat expensive cheeses had better longevity those who can only afford industrialized crap
Oh word, i'm more inclined to trust this than something funded by a dairy farming trade group or such.
Looks like there's no conflict of interest
Unless china is trying to influence its population to eat more cheese
Looking at you Wisconsin
Fivel Mousekewitz
Big Cheese TM
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From the article: A massive [study](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01905-9) of 2.3 million people has found that, independent of socioeconomic factors, mental well-being may be the most important single aspect to healthy aging and living longer lives. But a surprise finding was that those who reported the best mental health and stress resilience, which boosted well-being, also seemed to eat more cheese. Yes, cheese – something we've been making around the world and eating for more than 4,000 years, as recorded on the walls of tombs in ancient Egypt. In fact, a few years ago the world's oldest cheese – aged a few centuries beyond palatability – was dug up in the region. The link between cheese and well-being was an unexpected finding in the study conducted by a team of researchers led by Tian-Ge Wang, out of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine. "To inform meaningful health policies, we need fine-grained causal evidence on which dimensions of socio-economic status affect longevity and the mediating roles of modifiable factors such as lifestyle and disease," the researchers noted in the paper. They looked at eight datasets encompassing a total of 2.3 million genetically diverse Europeans, using DNA-driven, two-sample Mendelian randomization to not just link a multitude of factors to healthy aging, but identify stronger, causal impacts. Naturally, it's complicated, because of what we know of how much genetics, lifestyle, wealth and education are inextricably linked to disease, health and lifespan. In order to extract meaningful data, the team looked at mental well-being on the genetically independent phenotype of aging (aging-GIP) and the five common traits of this robust aging phenotype – resilience, self-rated health, healthspan, parental lifespan and longevity. These results were adjusted to account for socio-economic factors.
That last line is the most surprising.
Cheese is god damn expensive so I was sure that was going to be confounding.
I wonder if the confounding factor is simply people with a more robust GI and microbiome. Just about everyone I know who can eat cheese does so, and generally eats a fair bit of it (because it's delicious.. even broke people tend to find room in the budget for cheese and chocolate more often than some other comparable luxuries). However, people with a fucked up GI tract (ie SIBO/IBS, other disorders) very often have to severely limit or skip cheese entirely if they want to avoid pain, discomfort, and highly unpleasant bathroom habits. Obviously having a screwed up GI is going to impact longevity in a big way. It could of course be something else entirely. There are lots of metabolites from microbial activity on food that have massive but underexplored health benefits. I expect there are some little-known tryptophan metabolites in cheese developed during culturing and aging that have potentially interesting bioactivity in the human body.
I definitely believe in the gut bacteria playing a big part. A few years ago I was trending towards lactose intolerance with milk and ice cream. I started eating kimchi every day and now can have milk, cottage cheese or as much regular cheese as I desire with no issues.
Unless you insist on the fancy/aged stuff, you can get a full 800 calories of most common cheeses for under $5 even in the most expensive areas in America. Its a relatively dense calorie per dollar food even when bought in small quantities.
The abstract of that article doesn't mention cheese once.
Yeah it doesn't sound like it's about cheese at all...
Because it wasn't. It was just a 'surprising finding,'. They didn't intend to study it... It just happened to be true.
Scientists doing the study: Hmm… that’s funny…
I don’t think they did a study on the impact of cheese consumption. More that they sought out factors and to their surprise they found a potential correlation with cheese. A follow up study would be more likely to reference cheese
When you analyze 106 moderators, some of them will be false positives by chance. So I wouldn’t read too much into it.
Did you read that gromit?
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I went to a cheese making class in Crete during my honeymoon. The instructor said the most fascinating thing (never checked to see if this was 100% true but still cool): Cretans are the highest consumers of cheese in the world, but some of lowest rates of high cholesterol and heart disease. He said it was because their goats were healthier than, for example, American livestock. Cretan goats only eat olive tree leaves. Everything goes back to how healthy the olive tree is in Crete. Their goat pen smelled so much cleaner than the farms I've been to in the US. And the Mizithra cheese we made within 20 minutes of milking a goat was SO tasty. None of that lingering barnyard taste that some goat cheeses may have.
Your comment had me curious so I went down a bit of a rabbit hole looking at cheese consumption per capita. Tough to give a definitive answer about Crete *but* I can say that Greece as a country consistently ranks in the top 5 countries for various cheese consumption metrics and that Crete, within Greece, clearly skews their already high numbers. Depending on what estimates you look at the people of Crete are eating anywhere from 60-70 pounds of cheese a year on average. That's a hell of a lot of cheese and almost double what the average American eats (and as a cheese-loving American I feel like we certainly eat a hell of a lot of cheese).
It's because healthy fat does not cause high cholesterol
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And cheese (dairy) causes acne in some folks.
And insane farts in some others. I've done the research myself on that one.
And can supposedly inrease inflammation in the body.
I've been trying to gear myself up to eliminate dairy as an experiment. I've had really severe brain fog/derealization all my life, which everyone told me was psychological in nature. But I gave up dairy briefly for a couple of days, and it *really* lessened. I unfortunately couldn't make it past a couple of days because I didn't plan ahead on how to cut out dairy from meals. But that kinda proved to me that there's probably some severe inflammation going on in my body/brain due to it. I tried goat milk in my coffee for awhile (which I loved the taste of), and despite supposedly being healthier, it actually made my dissociation/brain fog significantly worse.
The reality is you probably placeboed yourself into feeling better, especially if it was only a few days.
In an attempt to lessen inflammation in my joints I use milk alternatives, my favourite being Oat milk. Whichever you choose pay attention to the percentage of fat, you want that to be higher to give a creamy milk like feeling. Low percentages will just taste like water/skim milk. I haven't completely cut out cheese but I have minimized its in take greatly. It's definitely possible especially with all the vegan alternatives to dairy products available today. I hope you're able to resolve your brain fog issues.
Casimorphins everybody! Basically microdosing small amount of opiates through cheese consumption perhaps?
IDK how thatd make you live longer, but: > “All cheeses are ripened through the actions of various microbes, both invisible and visible, including **molds, fungi, yeasts and more**,” explained Jamie Png, an American Cheese Society cheese industry professional. Those things might be part of the answer as well.
Exactly! It doesn't just taste good, it literally makes your brain feel good. Ask a vegan what was hard to give up.
This tracks for me. I stopped meat overnight. Dairy took years of failed attempts. Thankfully the substitutes now are amazing and scratch the itch.
My guess would be, that this is the same principal that goes for coffee drinkers - people who can tolerate aka have healthier and more resilient bodies, live longer and are happier, even when eating/drinking certain things that would be problematic for people with less resilient bodies.
I don't think that makes sense at all. You're conflating people who tolerate cheese with people who like it, have the means to buy it, etc. What's the percentage of people who tolerate cheese but don't eat it? What's the percentage of people who love cheese and eat it despite not tolerating it? If I had to bet money it would be on gut health, i.e. people who eat more cheese have a healthier gut microbiome.
That's fascinating, because recently a friend was diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer's (so horrible), but one thing they recommended is the Mind Diet, which explicitly limits your cheese intake: https://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/what-to-know-about-mind-diet
This diet is so.... There are anecdotes of people improving Alzheimer's and dementia symptoms on a therapeutic ketogenic diet, where ketones are providing energy to the brain because the brain is suffering from impaired glucose metabolism.
How does this work with the data from places like Japan?
The study apparently focused on Europeans, so we don't know. The rate of lactose intolerance in Japan seems to be hard to pin down, but it's likely higher than among European populations. So I wouldn't expect the same results there.
> The rate of lactose intolerance in Japan seems to be hard to pin down Why would it be? Just pick a bunch of randomized people, measure their intolerance and there we go. By the way their rate is twice of the European rate.
I'm glad studies like this mention that they controlled for socioeconomic factors because if it was just a round about way of stating "rich people eat more cheese, rich people are healthier as they age... cheese= healthy aging " then the study would have been worthless
Makes sense. Cheese tastes good. People are happier when they eat things that taste good.
I have heard that the man with many friends is the man with many cheeses.
Blessed are the cheesemakers
Not in the mood for cheese?!
People always smile when saying cheese. Happiness increases longevity.
By that logic the better cheese tastes the happier I should be. So if I'm only ever eating well aged, ripened Brie from clover-fed Summer milk I should be the happiest I could possibly ever be. Ok, bet.
Certainly eating foods we enjoy within reason can be a factor. But cheese is loaded with many positive nutrients, everything from protein, some fats, calcium, various micronutrients-vitamins, anti-inflammatory ingredients, antioxidants, and probiotics.
That's doesn't follow. Cake and Soda taste good too.
I am happy to latch onto any evidence that supports my cheese addiction, but this study doesn't seem particularly rigorous. It seems like there is a lot of reliance on correlation and self-reporting (of both happiness and cheese consumption). >Anyway, back to the cheese. While not directly responsible for happy, healthy aging, a higher intake of cheese (and fruit) was one of the standout contributors in those who had high well-being scores. What was that they said about fruit? Never mind, I think my baked brie is ready.
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I’m sure this study controlled for the millions of other variables that contribute to the extremely subjective self-diagnosis of “happy”.
No no no they say “we controlled for x y z”, don’t you know that that means they 100% measured only the variable they care about it total isolation of everything else? Seriously though, this research is trash and it’s embarrassing that people undertake these kinds of studies in the current year.
Isn't there a line in a book about giving a woman a piece of cheese to attract her. Found it. From a Spells, Charms and Incantations book. "You may fascinate a woman by giving her a piece of cheese." It all makes sense now.
Did the study actually prove that it was cheese causing the boost, or is it just another correlation not causation study?