Are Hard Cheeses Better for you Than Soft Cheeses?

When it comes to cheese, there are generally two different classifications. There are hard cheeses and there are soft cheeses. If these cheeses are better for you really depends on the nutritional value of the cheese. But, is it possible that one classification is better than the other? Let’s take a look at some of the hard cheeses and compare them to some of the soft cheeses and see which one comes out on top.

Kinds of Hard and Soft Cheeses

To understand if one cheese is better for you than the other, you first have to know what hard and soft cheeses are. Hard cheeses are generally known as your grating cheeses, when it comes to hard cheese, they are ones like parmesan, Romano, Pecorino, and some of the aged Goudas. For soft cheeses, you are looking at cheeses like Cheddar, cheese curds, Mozzarella, blue cheese, provolone, and Swiss cheese, which are generally cut by a knife instead of having to be grated up to use.

Nutritional Value of Hard Cheeses

When it comes to hard cheese, we also need to know what is in them. The hard cheeses like parmesan and pecorino they are generally very high in saturated fats and very high in sodium. They also tend to be higher in total fat than most of the soft cheeses. With the hard cheeses, because they have to be cooked more and more, they use whole milk and are more dense, which means that there is more in a little bit of that cheese than there is in a large block of the softer cheeses. Think about a cheesecake and how dense it is, and remember the nutritional information of it.

Nutritional Information for Soft Cheese

Sure, soft cheeses aren’t the best for us either, but when it comes to eating them, they have a little less of the bad stuff. The soft cheeses, while they are still fairly high in sodium, they aren’t quite as high in fat. This is for a few reasons, the density as discussed before and the fact that some of these cheeses like Mozzarella can be made with skim milk and doesn't always have to use whole milk.

In conclusion, the soft cheeses nutritionally are the better ones for you, they are going to have a smaller amount of saturated fat and they are going to have a smaller amount of total fat in them. While everything should be eaten in moderation, they are the better decision.

-Written by Viktoria Carella