All things cheese in France


Monday 18 October 2010

Fighting that Fat! Cheese on the front line?

The other day I was surfing the web regarding weight  because in my role as a fromologue, people constantly insist that cheese is fattening and bad for you. Since I eat a vast quantity of the stuff and other dairy products, don't do that much exercise except if you consider walking to the métro in Paris, have pretty low cholesteral and am not considered even vaguely fat, I am always looking for scientific evidence to fortify my argruments as well as my personal evidence to the contrary
 
So imagine my glee when I stumbled across this article regarding a study from 2004 which indicates that honest to goodness real, unadulterated diary products should not be considered necessarily fattening and, to the contrary, possess a lot of benefits especially for those who are obese. According to the articles I read following the subject, "getting enough calcium in your diet seems to stimulates the body to burn more fat and reduces the amount of new fat the body makes" per Dr. Michael Zemel, a professor of nutrition at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and a pioneer in this emerging area of research on the relationship between calcium and weight management.

Whoa! Gotta love that, but what is going on here? Apparently, researchers found overweight people who consumed 3 servings a day of calcium-rich dairy lost more belly fat than those who followed a similar diet with less of the dairy servings. To further emphasize the point, they found that calcium supplements didn't work as well the real deal! According to the good doctor, a diet low in calcium appears to stimulate the production of fat-producing enzymes and decreases the activity of enzymes that break down fat. "The moral of the calcium story is to not dump dairy when you're dieting...as it can help make your weight lost efforts easier," Zemel said.  

A note of caution however as this does not give people the license to go wild and over-indulge in dairy products hoping to generate weight loss. Helas! As we have always known, there is no gain (or loss in this case!) without some pain. In otherwords, you still have to burn more calories than you take in; eating properly and doing some exercise on top of that doesn't do any harm either. Still it's nice to know that eating all those diary products, in my case my cheese addiction, isn't killing me and could actually be helping keep those love handles under control!  Here's a link to one of the articles

Tuesday 12 October 2010

Domaines & Terroirs Updates

Back at the ranch, we have been very busy updating our site and our tours with a new home page, a sublime tour to Alsace and some short breaks in and around Paris.
 
- Alsace is home of Munster, fabulous wines, artisanal beers, fois gras  and la Cérémonie des Fromages by Bernard Antony at his käs-kaller in Vieux Ferette.

- Paris features several half day seminar/tours like visiting our favourite cheesemongers, creating a cheese board, and a trip to Rungis as well as two new trips - a day trip to Philippe Olivier's Fromagerie in Boulogne-sur-Mer and an overnight trip to la Cérémonie des Fromages by Bernard Antony in Vieux Ferette as well.
 
Have a look at Domaines & Terroirs and let us know what you think!  


"We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."  - T. S. Eliot, 1942