Too Good to be True

Don’t you love it when foods you really enjoy turn out to have health-giving properties that are almost too good to be true? Take cheese, for example. According to the latest research, it may be a natural cancer fighter. A study just published in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy has found that camembert, brie and cheddar could fight up to 30 types of cancer. The reason is nisin, a naturally occurring preservative substance produced by bacteria that live on cheese. Researchers from the University of Michigan found that nisin shrunk various cancerous tumors and other infections and killed up to 80 percent of cancer cells. The news about cheese comes on top of research showing that a glass of wine a day as part of a Mediterranean–style diet can reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s.