Goat cheese is often regarded as more artisanal, fancier, and overall, a more exclusive food than cow’s cheese.
But the fact is that this attitude doesn’t always reflect the reality of it, though, and goat cheese is actually a great and affordable alternative to cow’s cheese.
There are many, many benefits to eating goat cheese as opposed to cow’s cheese—both for your body, for the environment, and for the animals!
Today, we’re going to look at some of the biggest advantages of goat cheese, and why you might want to consider switching to goat cheese from your typical cheddar.
Let’s get started.
Lower in calories
Firstly, when compared with cow cheese, goat cheese is far lower in calories and fats.
At somewhere around 75 calories per ounce, depending on the particular kind of goat cheese and the breed it came from, goat cheese is far lower in calories than most cow cheeses—cheddar, for example, has around 115 calories per ounce!
There really is no competition, then.
Goat cheese is a much better option for cheese when it comes to calories.
But the benefits don’t stop there!
Vitamins
In terms of the content of healthy vitamins, goat cheese once again wins out over other cheeses.
Particularly, goat meat is rich in vitamin A, which is a powerful antioxidant.
Antioxidants prevent the formation of free radicals in the body’s cells—these cause damage over time and can lead to a number of health problems.
Goat cheese is also rich in vitamin B, particularly B6 and B12.
These vitamins play a variety of roles in the body, from the production of your red blood cells to making sure your nervous system remains robust and healthy.
Cow cheese simply can’t boast the same vitamin content, and so again goat cheese is the healthier option.
Minerals
Next, we have the mineral content.
Again, the average goat cheese is higher, pound for pound, in most minerals than the equivalent cow cheese.
It is richer in calcium, which is really important for the health of your skeleton and muscles.
It also contains high quantities of iron.
Iron is essential for the health of the blood, and helps your body produce red blood cells.
Goat cheese also contains high amounts of phosphorous, magnesium, and potassium.
Again, these minerals serve a variety of functions in the body, from maintaining a strong immune system to helping your vital organs keep healthy.
Digestion
For a few reasons, goat milk actually tends to be much easier to digest than cow cheese.
This is because of the lower lactose content found in goat cheese and goat milk.
Lactose is a special kind of sugar that is only found in milk and dairy products.
Because only infants possess the digestive enzyme needed to break it down, it can cause digestive trouble for many adults.
While goat milk is not lactose-free, it does have a much lower lactose content.
This will make it easier for you to digest, and you will expend less energy breaking it down in your gut.
Cow cheese is great, but I’m sure you’ve been in the position before where you ate just a bit too much and felt sick afterward.
While I still advise caution and moderation with goat cheese, you’re far less likely to have similar problems with goat cheese!
Anti-inflammatory
Goat cheese also has a lot of natural anti-inflammatory properties.
This is great again if you have any problems with inflammation after you eat a lot of cow cheese.
Goat cheese may well turn this issue on its head, and actually help your inflammation issues.
Again, this isn’t a guarantee, so if you have had problems with this, it’s worth trying a small amount to see how you react.
But goat cheese certainly is an anti-inflammatory.
Environmentally friendly
Moving on from the benefits to your own body and health, we can also see how the production of goat cheese is far easier on the environment.
Goats, being smaller and requiring less land than cows, are far more environmentally friendly.
They take up less space and, what’s more, they are nature’s weeders, and often don’t need large amounts of artificially manufactured food.
Cows need large amounts of feed, which has to be grown elsewhere on top of the land that is used to rear them.
This takes a considerable environmental toll.
This is a huge point in goat cheese’s favor. It’s more important than ever that we are conscious of these kinds of things and making the switch to goat cheese is one small thing you can do in that direction.
Milk production
The other thing about goats is that they actually produce, pound for pound, a lot more milk than cows do.
The implications of this for the environment are clear: if you can get more milk out of a single animal, then you don’t need to rear as many of that animal.
With fewer animals, the toll on the land and the environment is lessened.
Goats are machines, and the same 70 pounds of food given to a cow and a goat, the goat will produce a gallon more milk than the cow.
Goat cheese is really a fantastic option for cheese lovers, then.
It is lower in fat and calories than the same serving of cow cheese, and it contains a higher quantity of healthy vitamins and minerals.
Goat cheese really is one of the best options for cheese available, both when it comes to your own health and to the health of the planet.
Even if you’ve had trouble eating cow cheese in the past with digestive issues, goat cheese may well solve even this problem!