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FITNESS TIPS : Cheese: Healthier Than We Think?
If you eye the rolls and butter at a buffet, reach for cheese instead.

Topic: Food and Nutrition
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Although too much saturated fat isn't good for anyone -- especially people with high cholesterol -- it looks like all saturated fats may not be created equal. There's growing evidence that cheese raises cholesterol less than butter does. So when you're debating what to add to your plate, slice into the cheddar instead of loading up on croissants.

Where do you find most saturated fat? Think "moo" -- red meat and full-fat dairy products like ice cream, cheese, butter, heavy cream, and milk -- along with other foods of animal origin. As tempting as these foods can be, they spell bad news for your arteries. Eating too much sat fat raises both total and bad LDL cholesterol -- the blood fats that lodge in artery walls, encouraging dangerous plaque buildup. In one study, when a group of adults with mildly elevated cholesterol ate either butter or cheddar at almost every meal for 2 months, the butter eaters' cholesterol (both total and LDL) climbed up the charts, but the cheese eaters' barely changed.

This was a small study, but it confirms the results of two others done in cheese-loving Denmark and Norway. Still, it's not a license to go hog wild on cheese. The French stay slim not necessarily because they love cheese and wine, but because their typical portion sizes are much smaller than portion sizes in the United States.

SOURCES: Dairy fat in cheese raises LDL cholesterol less than that in butter in mildly hypercholesterolaemic subjects. Nestel, P. J., Chronopulos, A., Cehun, M., European Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2005 Sep;59(9):1059-1063. The ecology of eating: smaller portion sizes in France than in the United States help explain the French paradox. Rozin, P., Kabnick, K., Pete, E., Fischler, C., Shields, C. Psychological Science 2003 Sep;14(5):450-454.

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