Cheese is Good for You!

Cheese gets a bad rap because of its high fat content and while yes, sitting down and eating the entire cheese plate (sometimes we just can't help ourselves) will do your cholesterol - and skinny jeans - no favors, when supplemented with fruits and fibers, cheese is actually quite good for your health. Hooray!

I am currently reading a cheese textbook by one of America's greatest masters of cheese, Max McCalman, titled (wait for it...)

Mastering Cheese. And. It. Is. Awesome.

I was never stellar at paraphrasing and I'm too eager to share my findings so I'm going to pretty much lift them right out of the chapter,

A four ounce piece of solid farmhouse cheese supplies more than half the adult nutritional requirements for protein, fat, calcium, and phosphorus as well as significant portions of vitamins A, B2, and B12. If you compare the nutritional content of a 3.5 ounce chunk of a hard, aged Cheddar or Emmenthal cheese to an equivalent amount of chicken eggs (approximately 2 eggs), the cheese contains about twice as much protein and one quarter the cholesterol.

Three of the world's highest per capita cheese-consuming countries - Greece, Italy, and France - have some of the lowest rates of cardiovascular disease and some of the longest-lived populations. (Not to mention the world's most beautiful people. Coincidence?)

Along with the physical benefits of cheese, he goes on to tell us how it's great for our psyche, too,

The amino acid tyrosine (which humans cannot manufacture ourselves) exists in relatively high concentrations in cheese. When we eat cheese, molecules of casein (milk's primary protein) are broken down and digested in our bodies, releasing tyrosine for absorption into our bloodstream. The casein gets broken down further into a feel-good chemical, casomorphin, which is an opioid (in the same family as morphine and heroin, hence our feelings of addiction towards cheese)... and the tyrosine reacts with an enzyme called tyrosine hydroxylase to form such neurotransmitters as epinephrine (adrenaline), norepinephrine (helps fight depression and increases our attention skills and ability to focus), and dopamine (activates the brain's reward system).

Who needs uppers when you have cheese?

And that is just chapter one. If Santa Monica College offered a course on cheese, I would be first in line at registration.