Cheese a Week Linked to Lower Dementia Risk in Japanese Study

In a three-year Japanese cohort, older adults who ate cheese at least weekly showed a 24% lower risk of dementia (hazard ratio 0.76) versus those who rarely/never ate cheese, based on 3,957 matched pairs from nearly 8,000 participants. The association remained after adjusting for overall diet quality but remains observational and not causal. Most cheese consumed was processed, and researchers note potential biological pathways (e.g., vitamin K2, gut-brain axis) while acknowledging limitations such as baseline-only intake data and dementia measured via long-term care records.