Many people define cheese as the final frontier – the hardest thing to give up when moving towards a plant-based diet.
But while these people may love cheese, it doesn’t love them back.
In this exclusive Plant Based News‘ video, leading plant-based physician Dr. Neal Barnard talks about what happens to your body when you eat cheese.
Heart risk
He said: “A person sits down to have a meal that has a lot of cheese in it. Things start to go wrong within seconds.
“First of all, cheese is very high in sodium. People don’t think about that but there’s more sodium in cheese than there is in the same size serving of crisps. So your blood pressure starts to go up.
“There’s a lot of cholesterol and saturated fat, so that’s causing your blood cholesterol level to rise.
“All of these things start to make the heart get burdened and have greater heart risks.”
Dr. Neal Barnard talks cheese.Subscribe to PBN’s YouTube Channel here
Ditch the cheese
And that’s not all. According to Dr. Barnard the saturated fat also makes the blood more viscous, which makes you feel tired and sluggish.
Over the long run high saturated fat intake can take its toll on the brain – a long-term high intake has been linked with Alzhiemer’s disease. Fat from cheese can also get into fat and muscle cells, and cause insulin resistance.
But there is a good solution. “When you get the cheese out of your diet, suddenly your blood pressure starts coming down,” says Dr. Barnard.
“Your blood glucose starts coming down, your blood cholesterol starts coming down, your risk of Alzhiemer’s and these other things starts coming down as well.”