Come on guys, we asked really nicely and everything.

Slowly but surely more and more of us are waking up to the bollocks that is ‘low-fat’ or ‘reduced-fat’ food, which is often nothing more than a marketing gimmick to dupe the consumer.

A new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition says that’s certainly the case with cheese, because regular-fat cheese ‘has no marked effect on your bad (LDL) cholesterol’.

There’s more, with this below from Food And Wine:

…it does have a positive effect on your good (HDL) cholesterol—and it’s better for your HDL than that low-fat nonsense you’ve been (crying over) eating all these years.

Ag shame, we’ve all been fooled. More on the exhaustive nature of that study:

The 12-week long study included 139 subjects divided into three test groups: regular fat cheese eaters, reduced fat cheese eaters, and no cheese eaters (obviously, the saddest group). The cheese-eating groups included 80 grams of cheese in their daily diets—which is equivalent to about five-eighths of a cup of, say, grated cheddar.

The results showed that neither of these cheese-eating groups saw any significant difference in LDL cholesterol levels—or blood pressure, insulin levels, glucose levels, or waist measurements, for that matter—but the regular-fat cheese eaters saw a higher level of HDL cholesterol at the end of the study. The presence of HDL cholesterol is good because it helps maintain the endothelium of your blood vessels—helping to stave off conditions such as atherosclerosis, which can lead to heart attacks and strokes.

Anyone else going to be plonked on the couch eating a wheel of brie this evening? Fine, more for me then.

[source:foodandwine]