[Alpine cheese--healthy for your heart or just a lifestyle product?]

Until the 19th and the early 20th century, milk and milk products, particularly of alpine origins, seemed of special nutritional and health value and were highly recommended for the therapy resp. the therapeutic adjunct of various diseases, particularly for pulmonary tuberculosis. More recently, the association of saturated fat intake and arteriosclerosis led to the reduced use of milk and cheese resp. to the introduction of low-fat milk products. Again, alpine milk and cheese seem to differ somewhat from the others, since they appear to contain 4 times more alpha linolenic acid, three times more conjugated linoleic acid, a lower n-6:n-3 ratio, more total n-3 fatty acids and less palmitic acid as a measure of total saturated fat compared to cheese produced with silage feed in the lowlands (e.g. english cheddar). Even cheese from cows fed with linseed supplementations did not reach the n-3 concentrations of the alpine probes. Thus, alpine milk products from cows kept traditionally, and fed predominantly with alpine grass seem to have an interesting cardiovascular and possibly an economically favourable potential.