Credits: Social Media
I tried eating cheese before bed to see if it gave me nightmares �it did
Does eating cheese before bed give you wildly vivid, nightmarish dreams, or is it just dairy folklore? Sometimes, scientists shy away from the really big questions. If you want something done, do it yourself.
So I went to the cheesemongers and picked out four cheeses that struck me as particularly dream-productive. I am not lactose intolerant, so I didnt have to limit myself to blue cheese, mozzarella, feta, parmesan, and extra mature cheddar. Nor do I ever have to worry about storing cheese for months. (I eat it before that becomes an issue.) But I have been thinking, reading, and writing about dreams lately, so this seemed like a fitting experiment. In chronological order, these are the cheeses I tested for their dream-vividifying properties: halloumi, mascarpone, camembert, and edam. But first, a bit of background…
Scientific studies have not conclusively linked cheese to nightmares
Scientifically speaking, its a myth that eating cheese before bed gives you nightmares. But the myth goes pretty far back.
In 1964, a researcher noted that a patient stopped having nightmares after cutting cheese out of his diet. A 2005 study suggested that different types of cheese could influence the content of dreams, but it was hardly conclusive.
And yet, nearly a quarter of British people have at some time in their lives avoided eating cheese out of fear it will give them nightmares, or at least vivid dreams.
In the past, Ive experienced particularly vivid dreams after eating cheese. This is anecdotal, but in the 21st century, who can we trust but ourselves?
For my cheese-eating experiment, I picked out four cheeses and ate significant quantities of one of each of them before bed on four consecutive nights, while keeping a dream diary. Here are the results.
Cypriot Halloumi dropped me in a mirror world
Halloumi is one of my favorite things in the world, cheese or otherwise, but Ive never eaten it for scientific experimentation.
In my family, we call it squeaky cheese for the noise it makes when you chew it. I like to fry it long enough for the edges to turn a deep brown and cut it unevenly so that you get a combination of crispy edges and squeaky, chewy insides.
This time, I made a simple halloumi salad with arugula, some raw red onion, a handful of mint leaves, olives, some thinly sliced raw zucchini, and a sprinkling of toasted pine nuts.
So far so tasty. The dreams? Wild. I dont know what time of night I dreamt this, but I found myself in a hall of mirrors, surrounded by warped reflections of myself. However, I was wearing different clothes in each mirror like I was playing a different character in each.�
All the versions of me were friendly, and I greeted them all, one by one. I cant remember what happened after that. It was discombobulating but, overall, a positive experience.
7/10 for vividness. 4/10 for scariness.
Mascarpone had me chasing equines
I have always been a fan of mascarpone, and I have a notoriously sweet tooth, so on the second day, I made a no-bake lemon cheesecake with digestive biscuits and sprinklings of lemon zest.
When I went to bed that night, not long after consuming my second(-and-a-half) slice of cheesecake, I had several very short dreams in quick succession.
In at least three of them, I was in a wooded area wearing riding gear. As in, horseriding gear: jodhpurs and breeches. Sort of like Snoop Dogg at the Olympic Games, but decidedly less suave.
The issue was that I was without a horse. I was wearing the clothes of a horse rider, and somehow I knew that I should have a horse, but there were none around. I was looking behind trees and underneath bushes. Once, I found a saddle, but no horse. No dice.
This happened, like I said, in at least three very short dreams. Weird, but again, not awful.
6/10 for vividness. 2/10 for scariness.
Camembert gave me the scariest dream by far it involved being hunted by apex predators
When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When eating cheese for a (sort of) scientific experiment, you might as well indulge.
Id set the bar quite high with the mascarpone cheesecake, so to maintain a degree of consistency on Day 3, I baked an entire camembert with chunks of garlic and sliced green onion. Lots of black pepper. Sourdough bread to dip.
Maybe I ate too late. Something in the camembert set my cortisol off-kilter, or something. That night, when I went to bed, it took me a long time to get to sleep. I tossed and turned for an hour or two, and slept fitfully.
I awoke once in the night in a panic. Id dreamt that I was in a large green field by a copse. They were evergreen trees. It was cold. For some reason, I was calling into the woods while holding several wheels of camembert.
I didnt know why I was calling; something was compelling me to do it. I was trying to work out who or what I was coaxing out of the woods when it showed its face. It was a grizzly bear. First, it was nervous, glancing right and left, then it saw I was alone and started its charge.
Once it had started running, more and more bears appeared out of the woods and began running after it. Within seconds, a dozen or so grizzlies were all charging at me. I froze in terror. There was nothing I could do. I woke up just at the last moment, sweating.
8/10 for vividness. 8/10 for scariness.
Edams dream was just plain weird
By Day 4 I was exhausted, and apprehensive about what effect my fourth cheese was going to have on my dreams. But I was doing this for science for the greater good so I wasnt about to back down.
After dinner, while watching Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, I ate a few oatcakes with large slices of edam, a semi-hard cheese from the Netherlands. Its made in spheres, but usually, when you get it from the shop you just get a wedge cut from the sphere, with a thin layer of distinctive red wax along the outside wall.
All I can remember from that nights sleep was being in a car factory. The weird thing was that, instead of making cars, the factory was taking them apart. It had reversed the normal process and was removing first wheels, then fixtures and fittings, then plates from the body, and so on until just the chassis were left.
It was very bizarre, but fortunately, it wasnt scary at all.
5/10 for vividness. 1/10 for scariness.
Thus concludes the results of my not-so-scientific experiment. Feel free to try it at home as long as you’re not lactose intolerant.
- NOW YOU TELL ME: Cheese grater hack could have saved your knuckles years ago
