I love cheese! Maybe I am addicted. I suppose I come by it naturally because of my mother’s Danish roots. But, alas, the MIND diet recommends that cheese be eaten only once a week. This is  my biggest challenge on the MIND diet. Since I have been trying to lose weight, I have been using 2% cheese and staying within my calorie and saturated fat limit. Is that not good enough for the MIND diet?

I’ve always been able to follow a rule better if I understood the rationale for it.  So, I am trying to figure it out.

The MIND diet is based, in part, on the Mediterranean and the DASH diets, so I reviewed their thoughts on cheese.

• The NIH page on the DASH diet states that dairy products should be fat-free or low-fat. The servings per week varies by the calorie intake but the lowest is 2-3 fat-free or low-fat servings PER DAY and a serving of cheese is 1 1/2 ounces
• The NIH page on the Mediterranean Diet does not even mention any kind of dairy.
• Cheese is high in saturated fat. Cheddar Cheese (my favorite) has 6 grams of saturated fat per ounce per nutritiondata.com. Even cheese with 2% fat has 4 grams per ounce (per MyFitnessPal).
• However, whole milk has 5 grams per cup and the MIND diet folks don’t say to drink milk only once a week. There is no mention of using low-fat dairy.

So, is there something else about cheese that puts it on the AVOID list?

I checked both of the MIND diet articles by Morris et al. and some of the primary articles they cite. So, far I have not found much specifically about cheese. The Morris et al. (2015b) article lists ‘cheese’ in discussion of the MIND diet components and in a chart that shows how the diet was scored. However, in the discussion section, they write “The MIND diet components directed to limiting intake of unhealthy foods for the brain target foods that contribute to saturated and trans fat intakes; these include red meat and meat products, butter and stick margarine, whole fat cheese, pastries and sweets, and fried/fast foods.”

That makes me feel better if I slip up and eat my 2% cheese more than once a week. The scoring for cheese give 0.5 point for 1 to 6 servings per week. Now that I look closer, I see that the full point is based on less than 1 serving per week. They really don’t like cheese!

I am afraid I brought up more questions than answers. One more question: Surely, I don’t have to give up my fat-free cottage cheese, do I??

I think I will keep eating it and eating my 2% cheese a few times a week. In the mean time, I will keep my eyes open for reasons why cheese is worse than drinking whole milk, using cream in coffee, eating eggs (which are high in saturated fat), etc.

One more thought. Perhaps the question about cheese in the research was more of a way to find out how much saturated fat the participants ate. This would be along with the assessment of intake of red meat, butter and stick margarine, pastries and sweets, fried food. This chart on TOP FOOD SOURCES OF SATURATED FAT does show that cheese is the top source of saturated fat.

I am so sad. I am thinking that the pork chops I have in my refrigerator will be good for supper. They are fairly lean. Since I have been on the TLC diet, I don’t eat a large portion.  I am going to make Brown Rice and a salad with garbanzo beans to go with them, so it should be all good.

BUT, now I see that the USDA says PORK is red meat. And, RED MEAT is on the AVOID list. Actually, this is what the USDA site says:

“Oxygen is delivered to muscles by the red cells in the blood. One of the proteins in meat, myoglobin, holds the oxygen in the muscle. The amount of myoglobin in animal muscles determines the color of meat. Pork is classified a ‘red’ meat because it contains more myoglobin than chicken or fish. When fresh pork is cooked, it becomes lighter in color, but it is still a red meat. Pork is classed as ‘livestock’ along with veal, lamb and beef. All livestock are considered ‘red meat.'”

Actually, RED MEAT is limited to 4 servings a week, so I just have to limit what I eat the rest of the week. With the chicken and fish I have had this week, I will be fine. Whew! I know CBS News would not be considered a reliable source for this. I did check it with the actual article published by Morris et al. and this is correct, but I cannot link to the article itself.

So, why did I think of pork as white meat. Because the Pork Board said so. Their advertising campaign used Pork – the Other White Meat for years. Pork Board about how successful that advertising campaign was. They do have a good point, that lean pork can have less fat than chicken.

Here is another wrinkle: According to Science Daily, a Purdue University study of the DASH diet found that lean, uncured pork could be used in place of chicken and fish without a significant effect on blood pressure, which is the target of the DASH diet. This may or may not apply to the MIND diet, though. I haven’t had time to find the actual article yet, but this is the citation:

1. R. D. Sayer, A. J. Wright, N. Chen, W. W. Campbell. Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension diet retains effectiveness to reduce blood pressure when lean pork is substituted for chicken and fish as the predominant source of protein. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2015; DOI: 10.3945/ajcn.115.111757