Say Cheese!

This is a new angle for the dairy industry. It used to be “Milk, it does the body good.” But now recent research showing the link between dairy and weight loss, and even the prevention of weight re-gain after you’ve had a backslide into weight problems.

These new findings remind me of the habits of the healthy Mediterranean people who finish their meals with cheese for lunch and cheese for dinner. By the way, yogurt is a very common breakfast item for them, as well. This “dairy connection” fills in another piece of the French paradox!

Supplements

And it’s not about the calcium – the health benefits of foods are not found when the active ingredient is abstracted into a pill (Zemel 2002). In 17 studies that compared the effect of weight with use of calcium supplements, only one showed any effect at all. As stated by Dr. Zemel, the lead author of many of these studies:”These findings are further supported by … data demonstrating a profound reduction in the odds of being obese associated with increasing dietary calcium intake.”

Volume

The key is quality over quantity. Eat small when you’re having sumptuous, energy dense foods like cheese. As a ballpark measurement, keep the size of your portion to about the size of 4 dice put together.

How to add dairy

When you have your cheese at lunch, do it like these thin healthy French people do and use it as your “ender” to the meal – the punctuation of pleasure, after you’ve eaten, that tells your body and mind that the meal is over. The protein and oils send messages of satisfaction to your brain so that you just don’t want to eat between meals. You cut your cravings, increase your weight loss, add in Calcium, Magnesium, and Vitamin A, and all you’ve done is increase the pleasure of your meal. Let me tell you, it’s all good.

My favorites

Parano is a wonderful variety that reminds me of Parmesan, except it’s a little less sharp, a little more accessible to eat. Even though Morbier is a firmer cheese, it has a lovely creamy texture to it. If you like stronger cheeses, Reblochon and Taleggio are wonderful at the end of the meal with cold grapes from the refrigerator.

Supplemental material

Kidney stones. I was floored. Dr. Walter Willett and colleagues at Harvard analyzed the data from the massive Nurses’ Health Study to see the effect of calcium supplements on bone health. But do you know what they found? Calcium consumed as food was not only better for preventing kidney stones, but taking supplements actually increased the risk! I never saw that published study on the supplement commercials, but here’s what the doctors at Harvard conclude. “High intake of dietary calcium appears to decrease risk for symptomatic kidney stones, whereas intake of supplemental calcium may increase risk”.

Brain Freeze!

And speaking of dairy, summer’s coming on and it will soon be time to indulge in everyone’s favorite hot-weather dessert, ice cream. But the problem is the dreaded ice cream headache, also known as “brain freeze.”

Brain freeze, known to all true ice cream aficionados, stabs the forehead like a migraine. In fact, one scientific group recently proposed that it could be a model for studying this class of headaches.

What causes it?

Like migraines, brain freeze headaches are thought to be caused by changes in the blood stream. This is all in theory, because no proper explanation of this dreadful medical malady has been formulated. But the idea is that a big mouthful of ice cold ice cream rapidly cools the soft palate in the roof of the mouth, chilling the nearby arteries that run into the brain. The rapid cooling makes them contract – because they’re cold – which increases the blood pressure produces the brain pain. In fact, any icy substance held to the soft palate with the tongue, should yield the same painful result. But, while we’re doing science here, we might as well be testing it out with ice cream.

Cures

If you achieve a good solid case of Brain Freeze, what then? Some have proscribed putting the tongue on the upper part of the back of the palate to warm it up. But in reality, the pain only lasts a few minutes as the palate warms back up on its own, so most of us just wait it out.

Prevention

Although there are no known cures for the worst of life’s ills – the common cold, old age, and Brain Freeze – but certain preventative measures can be taken to keep them from happening in the first place. Be warned, however, because this requires some training.

The key is to eat your ice cream at a lusciously slow pace. This gives your palate a chance to warm back up before more of the frozen yumminess can cool things off again. Because this can be difficult in our rapidly moving lives – and when we don’t stop to smell the roses – when we don’t stop to really taste the ice cream. In times like these, brain freeze strikes and science reminds us that we need to go slow and enjoy. It may be hard at first, but practice, practice, practice.

KCRW Transcript April 19, 2005