---
title: Diet, Cheese and Omega-3 Fatty Acids: Is Cheese Healthy
description: Why even nutrition researchers go weak in the knees for cheese
canonical: https://time.com/3532516/cheese-health-benefits/
author: Mandy Oaklander
article:opinion: false
article:content_tier: free
article:published_time: 2014-10-23T14:49:15.000Z
article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:40:35.584Z
article:section: Health
og:title: Should I Eat Cheese?
og:description: Why even nutrition experts go weak in the knees for cheese
og:url: https://time.com/3532516/cheese-health-benefits/
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og:type: article
twitter:card: summary_large_image
twitter:title: Should I Eat Cheese?
twitter:description: Why even nutrition experts go weak in the knees for cheese
twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production
---
# Should I Eat Cheese?
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> Last updated: September 2026.
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## Video: The Truth About Fat
[Watch (HLS stream): The Truth About Fat](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/uYGhfNfS.m3u8) (5:15)
_Published 2014-06-12. When you want to lose weight or get healthy, what is the first thing you would normally cut from your diet? If you said fat, you're not alone_
by
[Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)
## Mandy Oaklander
Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME.
Oct 23, 2014 2:49 PM UTC
by
[Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)
## Mandy Oaklander
Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME.
Oct 23, 2014 2:49 PM UTC
_Welcome to_ Should I Eat This?_—our weekly poll of five experts who answer nutrition questions that gnaw at you._
Illustration by Lon Tweeten for TIME
**4/5 experts say yes.**
Science types are a rational folk. But dangle a block of cheese in front of them and, nutrition be damned, taste comes first.
“Good bread, good cheese, and good wine? The best,” says **Dr. David** **Katz**, MD, director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center. “And frankly, pleasure is good for health.”
Meanwhile, **Chuck** **Benbrook**, research professor at Washington State University’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources, also gives cheese the thumb’s up—but with a caveat. He’s the author of several studies about dairy, including one from 2013 that found [organic dairy has 62% more healthy omega-3s](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0082429) than conventional milk, partly due to the cow’s diet of fresh grass. Now, he’s a convert. “Pasture grasses and legumes provide milk cows with the building blocks for health-promoting omega-3 fatty acids, as well as the rich, earthy flavor in grass-fed whole milk,” he says. And he only eats full-fat cheese (so there’s your scientific blessing to skip the skim stuff).
Speaking of fat, there might be something unique about the kind that comes from dairy. Recent [research](http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/apnm-2014-0154) linked French Canadians’ dairy consumption to better metabolic health. The study author **Iwona** **Rudkowska**, a researcher at the CHU de Québec Research Center, points out that dairy contains a fatty acid has been shown to have health-promoting effects on metabolic health, [including diabetes](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23407305), she says.
### QUIZ: Should You Eat This or That?
Which is better for you: Half cup of ice cream or 3 scoops of sorbet? Getty Images (4)
Answer: A half cup of ice cream If you eat what you’re craving, you’re more likely to feel satisfied and eat less. And scoop for scoop sorbet contains twice the sugar with none of the filling dairy protein and fat. Getty Images (5); Gif by Mia Tramz for TIME
Which is better for you: Real butter or spray on fake butter? Getty Images; Tara Johnson for TIME
Answer: Butter Serving size for spray butters (even low-calorie ones) are around a 1/3 second spray. What on earth does that mean? You're better off using a small amount of real butter as opposed to guessing how much you're using of the mystery melange of up to 20 ingredients. Getty Images (1); Gif by Mia Tramz for TIME
Which is better for you: A turkey burger or a sirloin burger? Getty Images (2)
Answer: Sirloin burger Restaurant turkey burgers are often made with dark meat and the skin, so they’re not necessarily better for you (and for the record, they aren't low-fat). You can get a sirloin burger that’s 95% lean meat and gives you 20 g of protein. Just be careful with the toppings. Getty Images (1); Gif by Mia Tramz for TIME
Which is better for you: Almonds or pretzels? Getty Images (2)
Answer: Almonds Almonds are high in protein, fiber and fat and will keep you feeling fuller longer. Give high-sodium pretzels about an hour and you'll feel hungry again thanks to the high-carb no-fat or protein content. Getty Images (1); Gif by Mia Tramz for TIME
Which is better for you: Special K or eggs? AP; Getty Images
Answer: Eggs In the morning, you want a meal that will fill you up. Eggs offer protein and fat for satiety, but Special K cereal really only offers carbs and, well, air. If you want carbs to kick off the day, you're better off pairing eggs with a slice of 100% whole grain toast. Getty Images (1); Gif by Mia Tramz for TIME
Which is better for you: Fat free salad dressing or regular salad dressing? Tara Johnson for TIME
Answer: Regular salad dressingTo absorb fat soluble vitamins like Vitamins E and K in vegetables you need to consume them with a fat to aid nutrient absorption. Fat-free dressing, meanwhile, is low-calorie but gets its flavor from added sugar and salt. Tara Johnson for TIME (5); Gif by Mia Tramz for TIME
Which is better for you: A low fat cookie or dark chocolate? Getty Images (2)
Answer: Dark chocolate “People believe fat free is calorie free,” says Keri Gans, a registered dietitian in New York City. “Go for the real thing.” Fat free cookies tend to be high in carbs, sugar and fake sugar. Try a nice piece of antioxidant-rich dark chocolate instead. Getty Images (2); Gif by Mia Tramz for TIME
Which is better for you: Low fat Greek yogurt or 100 calorie Yoplait yogurt? Tara Johnson for TIME
Answer: 2% Greek YogurtA little fat is good in the morning to keep you full—plus it has upwards of 17g of protein per container. Fat-free "fruit" yogurt is high in sugar—7 to 10 g per serving—and lower in protein. Tara Johnson for TIME (2); Gif by Mia Tramz for TIME
Cheese—well, the fat in cheese—even helps our bodies absorb more nutrients during digestion, says **Sylvie** **Turgeon**, researcher and professor in the food science department at Université Laval in Québec. (The Québecois, it seems, really love their fromage.)
But in the health department, cheese gets a demerit from **Katz**. “In addition to be highly concentrated in calories and saturated fat, cheese tends to be very high in sodium,” says Katz. “It’s a good protein source, but there are better ones that don’t have such baggage.”
Registered dietitian **Lindsay Malone**, from the Cleveland Clinic, agrees. “A better way to spice up your salad, sandwich or snack,” she says, is “nuts, nut butters or avocados.”
If the thought of a grilled-nut-butter-sandwich gets you down, don’t despair. You can—and probably should—eat cheese sparingly for its protein, calcium and vitamin D, Malone says. Two slices of Swiss pack 44% of your daily calcium and 15 grams of protein.
The results are clear: even nutrition buffs go weak in the knees for cheese.
_Read next:_ [_Should I Eat Eggs?_](http://time.com/3450058/should-i-eat-eggs/?xid=time%5Freadnext)
## Transcript
[ MUSIC ] There's something we all enjoy about staying for dinner. You ever thought why? What was on your dinner table when you were younger? Chances are it had a lot to do with, what your doctor was telling you is healthy. Building a strong healthy body is like building a strong, beautiful building. If the foundation is weak, the whole building will be weak. It takes five fingers to point the way to healthful eating habits. Well, here we go. For years, the government published dietary guidelines. Meant to keep Americans healthy. There's a great deal to learn. Tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you what you are.
The body needs certain substances to live and grow. And remember, your body isn't just like an automobile. For years, the key measures of those guidelines were the same, cut fat from your diet. The committee's original report urged Americans to reduce their risk of heart attack. By reducing their intake of cholesterol down to the equivalent of about one egg a day. And those guidelines had an effect. From 1977 to 2012, per capita consumption of eggs fell by 9 %, beef by 37 %, whole milk by 72 %. Calories from saturated fat fell, while calories from supposedly safe carbohydrates increased. As one expert put it, it was a vast nutritional experiment.
With nearly a million American's a year dropping dead from heart disease in the mid 80s, we had to try something. Nearly four decades later results are in. The experiment was a failure. Americans are sicker than they've ever been before. The prevalence of diabetes has gone up 157 % from 1980 to 2011. Nearly one in ten Americans now has the disease. Causing the public health system $ 245 billion a year. Heart disease is still the number one killer in the country. Americans are as obese as ever. So, what went wrong? Good old granola. Great for taste but loaded with fat. It doesn't take much of imagine a leap to assume that fat would make us fat, clog our arteries and raise the risk of heart disease.
It turns out that saturated fat is a lot more complicated than we think. Carbohydrates and fats are nutrients. Like man, you need nutrients to live and grow. [ MUSIC ] Firstly, there are two kinds of cholesterol. LDL which is linked to heart disease and HDL which can be protective. Fats that course through the blood are known as triglycerides and high levels of those are linked to heart disease. Saturated fat raises LDL cholesterol but also raises HDL. Moving LDL buildup on arterial walls. So raising both, makes saturated fat a cardio wash. One key piece of information is that LDL seems to come in two forms.
Large and fluffy, small and dense. Those smaller particles are linked to heart disease, while the larger ones are mostly benign. Saturated fat increases the number of large particles. The opposite happens with carbs. I don't get it. Researchers have long since discovered the kind of fats found in olives and in fish like salmon. Are actually heart protective. Now it turns out the fats found in meat and dairy, aren't as bad as we feared before. So that means by focusing so much on fats. We may actually have been making ourselves sicker. So, she brings up the subject of reduced- fat cheese. It's a fat- free [ UNKNOWN ].
Fat- free, cholesterol free. Low- fat granola. Reduced- fat Kettle chips. Reduced- fat Chips Ahoy. Lowfat cottage cheese. Non- fat yogurt is the perfect example. The thinking for consumers was simple. Fat was dangerous. This product had no fat. Therefore, it must be healthy. It's non- fat, which means less calories. [ MUSIC ] But amid the confusion about fat, we end up replacing it in our diets with sugars and carbohydrates, which meant our calorie intake was actually going up. When carbs and things like corn and white bread are ingested into your body, their converted into sugars. Those sugars convert to insulin cuz it's fat cells go into storage overdrive, leading to weight gain.
Since fewer calories are then left to fill the body, you begin to feel hungry it means our metabolism begins to slow down in effort to save energy, we eat more and we gain more weight, never quite feeling full. As this process repeats, our cells become more resistant to insulin, which causes us to gain more weight, which increases insulin resistance in a vicious circle. Cut calories, and people just get hungrier. Obesity, diabetes, high triglycerides and low HDL cholesterol can all follow. Study after study has found it's very difficult to lose weight on a very low- fat diet. Possibly because fat and meat can produce a sense of satiety, that's hard to achieve with carbs, making it easier to simply stop eating.
But it isn't just the increase in carbs that affects us. These processed, low saturated fat alternatives, come loaded with sugars, salt, preservatives, and even some unhealthy fats. So what's the real alternative? As one extra puts it, the cold hard truth about diet is that the only way to eat well, is to eat well. You'll be happier and you'll be healthier, if you focus on real whole foods, whether they have fat or not. Got it. And thanks, we'll never forget what we've learned.
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