Latest Fact Sheet

Season 2, Ep 8 - Cheese

• Cheese has a very high saturated fat content and kiwis eat too much saturated fat. Current consumption is something around 13% of our calorie intake as saturated fat, the WHO recommends that less than 10% of our calories should come from saturated fat.

• Cheese is low in lactose; most lactose intolerant people can eat cheese without any problems. Everyone can digest lactose as a child (breast milk) but 75% of adults worldwide lose the ability. This is not really surprising when we consider that humans are the only mammals to continue to drink milk after weaning.

• Development of the ability to digest lactose as adults is one of the strongest selective pressures in human evolution. You were 10-15% more likely to survive and breed if you could digest lactose as an adult. 10,000 years ago all humans were lactose intolerant. Today 91% of Northern Europeans adults can digest it. Most Africans are intolerant, except a few tribes that herd cattle.

• Processed cheese is made by heating natural cheese to about 80 degrees with emulsifying salts, creating a stable cheese with a longer shelf-life. It was invented by James L Kraft in 1917 to provide long life cheese to soldiers in WW1.

• Grated cheese is not good value for money: it can cost $4.50 more per kilo than buying a value block and grating your own.

• Processed cheese has a lower protein content than normal cheese. So processed cheese slices work out at $8.42 per 100g of protein. A 1kg block of Colby works out at $5.41 per 100g of protein.

• Cheese (and dairy in general) helps prevent against tooth decay. Studies show that kids from families with low dairy consumption have more cavities

• There’s no convincing evidence that cheese promotes sleep...or that it causes nightmares. A British cheeseboard study suggests that tryptophan in cheese might promote sleep, but tryptophan only promotes sleep in very low protein meals – less than 5%. Cheese is around 20% protein.

• B.Linens is the bacterium that makes stinky cheese stinky. It likes salty places like its cousins which are found on the seashore and human skin. Stinky cheese smells so much like odorous people because both types break down proteins into fishy, sweaty, and garlicky odours.

• Camembert was described by a French Poet as “the feet of god”

• Many people have an aversion to cheese, and for a good reason. Cheese is really the product of controlled spoilage of milk. Many of its smells and flavours are the same as those of food that’s gone off.

• Rennet contains enzymes that curdle milk. It’s an extract from the lining of the fourth stomach of a milk fed calf.

• Like a fine red wine, cheese should be served at room temperatures. This allows the fats to soften and the aromas to be released.