The Study
High- and Low-Fat Dairy Consumption and Long-Term Risk of Dementia
This study watched what people ate for 25 years and noticed that those who ate more high-fat cheese and cream tended to get dementia less often. But it didn’t make people change their diets — it just watched. So we can’t say cheese caused the lower risk — maybe people who ate cheese also had healthier lifestyles we didn’t measure.
Analysis score
Maximum 72 for a cohort study.
Where the score came from
Scientists tracked what people ate for 25 years to see if certain dairy foods affect dementia risk.
Where does this study sit?
Reviews of RCTs (Meta-analyses)
Max 100Randomized Trials
Max 90Reviews of Cohort Studies
Max 85Cohort Studies
Max 72Reviews of Case-Control Studies
Max 63Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional & Case Series
Max 50Expert Opinion
Max 560 / 100
Quality score
Groups of people are followed over time to see who develops an outcome. Strong for identifying risk factors and associations, but cannot prove causation as firmly as RCTs.
Key takeaways
Summary
Based on the study abstract and findings.
- 1Eating a small daily portion of full-fat cheese or cream may help lower dementia risk, but it’s not a guaranteed shield — and swapping it for meat or milk might make things worse.
- 2People who ate at least 50 grams of high-fat cheese daily had a 13% lower risk of dementia; those who ate 20+ grams of high-fat cream had a 16% lower risk.
- 3This only happened in people without a specific gene (APOE ε4).
- 4Other dairy like milk or low-fat cheese showed no benefit.
Score breakdown, methodology, conflicts of interest, evidence analysis & raw study data
Publication
Journal
Neurology
Year
2026
Authors
Yufeng Du, Yan Borné, Jessica Samuelsson, Isabelle Glans, Xiaobin Hu, Katarina Nägga, Sebastian Palmqvist, Oskar Hansson, Emily Sonestedt
Related Content
Claims (5)
People who eat cheese have a lower incidence of dementia compared to those who do not.
People who eat at least 50 grams of high-fat cheese every day have a 13% lower risk of developing any form of dementia and a 29% lower risk of vascular dementia over 25 years, compared to those who eat less, based on observations in a large Swedish adult population.
People who do not carry the APOE ε4 gene variant who consume high-fat cheese have a 13% lower risk of Alzheimer disease compared to those who do not consume it; this association does not occur in people who carry the APOE ε4 gene variant.
People who consume at least 20 grams of high-fat cream each day have a 16% lower risk of developing any form of dementia over 25 years, based on data from a Swedish cohort study. Similar patterns were seen for Alzheimer disease and vascular dementia.
People who eat high-fat cream and high-fat cheese have a lower risk of dementia than people who eat other dairy products like milk, low-fat cheese, or butter.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making health decisions.