Cheese - Why You Should Eat It

by Jacki Donaldson (Subscribe to Jacki Donaldson's posts)
Feb 4th 2009 8:00AM

10 Essential Diet Basics

Eat a diet full of color
Colorful fruits and vegetables are stocked with fiber, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. They're low in calories and can help you stay satisfied longer.

Eat whole grains
Unlike white products, whole grains are unrefined products with their nutrients and fiber intact. Make your grains 100 and they'll help you maintain blood sugar levels with less spiking and crashing throughout the day. They'll also keep you satisfied longer.

Eat good fats
Not all fats are bad. Some fats are good for us -- like olive oil instead of butter or margarine, and some nuts and seeds.

Eat often
Start with a hearty breakfast and commit to eating throughout the day to keep your metabolism stable. Aim for three meals a day, plus a few healthy snacks too.

Snack before meals
Snacking before dinner won't ruin your appetite. It may actually help it. Healthy snacking can prevent you from overeating come meal time.

Eat whole, fresh foods
Whenever possible, purchase fresh foods and avoid the pre-packaged items lining the shelves at your local grocery store. These foods are typically higher in calories, fat, and sodium and have depleted nutrients due to preservatives.

Keep moving
Our bodies were designed for movement. And we need daily exercise to keep them strong. Exercise is good for our muscles, our hearts, even our sleep patterns.

Treat yourself
It's OK to indulge once a while. If we don't, deprivation sets in and so might overindulgence. So have your cake -- just have it moderation.

Decipher food labels
Read your labels. And make sure when you review the details you understand whether the calories and fat listed are per serving or for the entire container. And if there's a word you can't pronounce, it's likely something you don't need to ingest.

Beware of liquid calories
One 12-ounce can of regular soda can contain 10 teaspoons of sugar and enough calories to ruin the day. Sure to add weight, these drinks should be replaced with water.

When I was cleaning up my diet more than a year ago, I bid a fond farewell to cheese. It wasn't exactly my favorite food or anything, but I was no stranger to it either. I ate it on pizza, tacos and crackers, and I liked it. It was an easy cut from my diet, though, and I'm pretty sure I lost a few pounds when I nixed it.

Cheese has slowly crept back into my diet in small amounts, which is a good thing. Well, Reader's Digest says it's good, anyway, and reports that eating cheese can be heart healthy. Women in one study who ate a serving a day (think the size of about four dice) had higher good HDL cholesterol and lower bad LDL cholesterol than those who ate less. Men didn't enjoy the same benefits -- sorry, guys -- because they tend to pick cheeses higher in salt and saturated fat.

If you're a fan of cheese, by all means, have some. Just have it like this:

Pick part-skim. Less saturated fat but just as much taste. Still bunches of calcium and essential fatty acids too.
Skip fat-free. Too much sodium to cover for lost flavor, and the texture can be rubbery.
Get gourmet. High in fat but rich in taste so you won't eat too much.

Source

Comments (3)

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

DavidDMC 2-04-2009 @ 12:01PM

No offense at all to the blog author, but that's ridiculous. I'd love a link to the specifics of the study. Cheese, no matter what kind, is full of saturated fat and cholesterol, not to mention ALL of the negatives of cow's milk/dairy (hormones, pus, supporting the veal industry, antibiotics, etc). If you're going to eat cheese it's best to minimize it. Eating it every day is not healthy in any way.

u262f 2-04-2009 @ 5:23PM

I agree with you. Even if the study is accurate, correlation does not imply causation. I find it far more likely that eating cheese is a side effect of attitudes leading to the better HDL/LDL ratio, not the cause of the better ratio. For example, women who avoid cheese completely might be more likely to replace it with refined carbs, while those who eat cheese might be more likely to eat other animal products and get a more reasonable balance of protein in general.