When people ask me if a food is healthy or not,
my response is, “Compared to what?"
So when studies show cheese has a neutral
or beneficial effect on health,
that’s the question I sought to answer.
"Is Cheese Harmful or Healthy? Compared to What?"
In a series of videos I did about saturated fat,
I talked about a major campaign launched by the global dairy industry
to neutralize the negative image of milkfat among regulators
and health professionals as related to heart disease.
That campaign continues to this day with the publication of
a meta-analysis demonstrating neutral, meaning non-harmful associations,
between dairy products and cardiovascular disease and death.
OK, well first of all, how do we know the dairy industry
had anything to do with this study?
Well, it was published in a journal that forces authors
to disclose financial conflicts of interest.
Let's see, what they divulged. Dairy, dairy, dairy, dairy,
dairy, dairy, the 4th largest dairy company in the world,
dairy, dairy, milk, beer, soda, McDonald's, dairy, dairy,
dairy, dairy, dairy.
Oh, and the study itself was explicitly funded by dairy, dairy, dairy.
OK, then.
The other big new one was this, suggesting that a little bit of cheese
every day isn't just neutral, but actually good for you.
And they make it clear that they have no conflicts of interest;
they're just employees of the Yili Innovation Center
and the Yili R&D Center, you know, China's largest dairy producer,
making it one of the world's largest dairy companies.
OK, but how can cheese consumption be associated with better health outcomes?
Well, most of these studies were from Europe,
where cheese consumption is associated with a higher socioeconomic status.
See, in Europe they're not eating Cheez Whiz and Velveeta.
Cheese is generally an expensive product, and so who eats cheese?
Those with higher paying jobs,
higher socioeconomic strata, higher education levels,
all of which are associated with better health outcomes,
which may have nothing to do with their cheese consumption.
Higher socioeconomic groups also consume
more fruits and vegetables, and more candies.
So I bet you could do a population study
and show candy consumption is associated with better health.
Shh, don't tell the National Confectioner's Association.
Too late!
Did you know that candy consumers have lower levels of inflammation,
a 14% decreased risk of elevated blood pressure?
Brought to you by the candy industry and the USDA, our government,
which props up the sugar industry to the tune of a billion dollars a year.
It's like when our tax dollars are used to buy up surplus cheese.
Paul Shapiro wrote a great editorial.
Imagine the headline "Government Buys $20 Million in Surplus Pepsi,"
our hard-earned tax dollars buying up millions of unwanted cola cans,
all as a favor to the flailing soda industry,
which just kept producing drinks no one wanted.
As outrageous as such a government handout to the soda industry would be,
that's exactly what the USDA is doing for the dairy industry.
Michele Simon did a great report on how our government
colludes with the industry to promote dairy junk foods.
The federal government administers "check-off programs"
to promote milk and dairy.
McDonald's has six dedicated dairy checkoff program employees
at its corporate headquarters to try to squeeze in more cheese.
That's how we got double steak quesadillas.
That's how we got 3-Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza,
complete with a "Summer of Cheese."
These funds are being used to promote foods
that contribute to the very diseases
our federal government is allegedly trying to prevent.
Does it make sense to tell Americans
to avoid foods high in salt, sugar, and saturated fat,
while engaging in the promotion of those same foods?
Look, the meat and dairy industries can do what they like with their own money,
but the public power of taxation should be used for the public good,
not to support the dairy and candy industries.
When industry-funded studies suggest their products
have neutral health effects, or even beneficial,
one question you always have to ask is compared to what?
Is cheese healthy? Compared to what?
If you're sitting down to make a sandwich, cheese is probably healthy—
compared to bologna—but compared to peanut butter? No way.
That's the point Walt Willet made, former chair of nutrition at Harvard.
To conclude that dairy foods are "neutral" could be misleading, as
it could be misinterpreted to mean that increasing consumption of dairy foods
would have no effects on cardiovascular disease or mortality.
Lost is that the health effects of increasing
or decreasing consumption of dairy foods would depend
importantly on the specific foods that are substituted for dairy foods.
Like what are you going to put on your salad?
Cheese would be healthy compared to bacon, but not compared to nuts.
See, consumption of nuts or plant protein
has been found to be protectively associated
with the risk of coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
In contrast, intake of red meat, for example, has been associated
with increased risk.
Thus, it's reasonable to assume that the lack of association with dairy foods
could put them somewhere in the middle of a spectrum of healthfulness,
but certainly not an optimal source of energy or protein.
More broadly, the available evidence supports policies
that limit dairy production and encourages production
of healthier sources of proteins and fats.
He wasn't just speculating.
This was based on three famous Harvard studies involving hundreds of thousands
of men and women exceeding 5 million person-years of follow-up.
This was really the first large-scale prospective study to examine dairy fat
intake, compared to other types of fat in relation to heart attack and stroke risk.
So replacing like 100 calories of fat worth of cheese
with 100 calories of fat worth of peanut butter on a daily basis
might reduce risk up to 24%,
whereas substitution with other animal fats might make things worse.
Here's how it breaks down for heart disease.
Swapping dairy fat for like vegetable oil would be associated
with a decrease in disease risk, whereas swapping dairy for meat increases risk.
Dairy fat calories may be as bad or worse as straight sugar.
The lowest risk would entail swapping to a whole plant food, like whole grains.
Yeah, dairy products are a major contributor
to the saturated fat in the diet and have thus been targeted as
one of the main dietary causes of, you know, the #1 killer of men and women.
But the dairy industry likes to argue
there are other things in dairy products like fermentation by-products
in cheese that could counteract the saturated fat effects,
all part of an explicit campaign by the dairy industry to neutralize
the negative image of milkfat among regulators and health professionals.
If Global Dairy Platform looks familiar, they were one of the funders
of the milk-and-dairy-is-neutral study,
trotting out their dairy-fat- is-counteracted notion.
To which the American Heart Association responds that
no information from controlled studies supports the assertion
that fermentation adds beneficial nutrients to cheese
that somehow counteract the harmful effects of the saturated fat.
We need to cut down on dairy, meat, coconut oil,
no matter what their respective industries say.
In fact, that's the reason the American Heart Association
felt that they needed to release this special Presidential Advisory in 2017.
They wanted to set the record straight on why well-conducted scientific research
overwhelmingly supports limiting saturated fat in the diet.