I don’t usually eat cheese because I have lactose intolerance, just as 99% of other East Asians (Alharbi & El-Sohemy, 2017). To prepare for the cheese tasting on Wednesday, I took four dairy relieve pills filled with lactase enzyme.
There are thousands of kinds of cheese in Paris. They say if you try one type of cheese per day during your stay in Paris, you will have to stay for years before tasting every type of cheese (A. Fropos, personal communication, May 24, 2018). The cheese tasting place that we went to, le cheese geek, has over 150 types of cheese. We tasted six of them.
As our guide taught us, there are multiple steps one should follow when tasting a piece of cheese. My steps of eating cheese are: Step one, grab the cheese; Step two, put it in my mouth; Step three, grab more. But this method is for cheese that I bought from the supermarket. At the cheese tasting place, everything was more sophisticated. The first step should be to look at and appreciate the structure and the texture of the cheese. The second step is to smell it. Then one should always eat the cheese with some juice that goes with it. Take it slow while enjoying the flavor.
I had a blast at the tasting, eating a lot of cheese. I have a disproportionally large stomach relative to my size, so I always appreciate places where I am allowed to eat as much food as I can.
This visit, however, was more than simply to test how much cheese I can eat. It was also a chance to recognized this cheese-eating culture in France. To some French people, cheese is not just food. It is art. I do not expect to find a similar place in the US because I doubt if most Americans can name more than four kinds of cheese.
Moreover, some studies suggested that this trip might have potentially decreased my dementia risk. One paper indicates that the compound dehydroergosterol in camembert cheese can reduce microglia inflammation and thus have a neuronal protective effect in vitro. (Ano et al., 2015a). Another study found an in vivo effect of camembert cheese extract suppressing the accumulation of Aβ, which is known to be a critical Alzheimer’s pathology (Ano et al., 2015b). It is still uncertain if we can prevent dementia by eating cheese. But if we can, I will surely prefer to reduce my risk by eating French, not American, cheese.
Reference
Alharbi, O., & El-Sohemy, A. (2017). Lactose Intolerance ( LCT -13910CT) Genotype Is Associated with Plasma 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Concentrations in Caucasians: A Mendelian Randomization Study. The Journal of Nutrition, 147(6), 1063-1069. doi:10.3945/jn.116.246108
Ano, Y., Kutsukake, T., Hoshi, A., Yoshida, A., & Nakayama, H. (2015). Identification of a Novel Dehydroergosterol Enhancing Microglial Anti-Inflammatory Activity in a Dairy Product Fermented with Penicillium candidum. Plos One, 10(3). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0116598
Ano, Y., Ozawa, M., Kutsukake, T., Sugiyama, S., Uchida, K., Yoshida, A., & Nakayama, H. (2015). Preventive Effects of a Fermented Dairy Product against Alzheimer’s Disease and Identification of a Novel Oleamide with Enhanced Microglial Phagocytosis and Anti-Inflammatory Activity. Plos One,10(3). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0118512
Kim, B., Hong, V. M., Yang, J., Hyun, H., Im, J. J., Hwang, J., Yoon, S., Kim, J. E. (2016). A Review of Fermented Foods with Beneficial Effects on Brain and Cognitive Function. Preventive Nutrition and Food Science, 21(4), 297-309. doi:10.3746/pnf.2016.21.4.297