LINKS: Cheese Dreams

By Kara

Yet another myth dispelled by rigorous modern science: contrary to popular (British) belief, cheese does not give you nightmares.

"For decades," according to the Daily Mail, "parents have warned their children not to have cheese before bedtime to prevent bad dreams."

Well, not my parents. But - thank goodness! - the newest generation of English would-be cheese-lovers will also be spared that old wives' tale, thanks to a 2005 study by the British Cheese Board. According to their research, consuming small amounts of cheese in the evening is correlated with experiencing a restful night's sleep, marked by an absence of nightmares. Cheese may even afford dreamers some control over their nocturnal experiences: in the study, different kinds of cheeses were reliably associated with different sorts of dreams, including celebrity cameos (Cheddar), bouts of nostalgia (Red Leicester), forward-thinking fantasies (Lancashire), and bizarre phantasmagoria (Stilton). (Source: Dairy Reporter.)

I stumbled upon these findings through a post on Yahoo Answers (UK & Ireland), which offers some other entertaining insights on the topic of cheese.

And lest we chalk this all up to those crazy Brits and their especially nutty old wives: NPR picked up the story, too.