An old wives tale says that you should not eat cheese directly before sleeping, as it can alter your dreams. According to Greatist, in 2005 the British Cheese Board performed a survey where participants ate different types of cheese before their slumber to prove the wives’ tale’s authenticity. Throughout the week of November 13 through 19, four journalism students and their brave teacher decided to eat cheese to see how it would affect their dreams. Two students munching on the average mozzarella cheese sticks and the other two were on mature Irish white cheddar. All true trials begin with previous knowledge, in this case of our sleep before eating the cheese nightly. Mr. Poitras, Cecillia, and Lela are avid dreamers, having vivid and memorable dreams nightly. Shelby and Hannah do not dream regularly. Cecilia and Shelby, with their lactose intolerance, were perfect for eating mozzarella, as it has a lower lactose content. Hannah and Lela ate the white cheddar, partially for the preferred taste and partially for the higher tryptophan content, which is an amino acid in cheese that could have the ability to alter dreams, as it is linked to neurotransmitters.
Hannah’s Perspective:
Before eating the cheese, I was not an avid dreamer. Usually, I only dream when I take a nap and then go back to sleep for the night. My dreams are usually short, and I will remember them when I wake up, but not because they are vivid or frightening. I oversleep, taking a nap most days of the week and then going to sleep for the night after. My sleep schedule is not very balanced or healthy because I do oversleep, but given the medication I am taking for my mental health, it tends to tire me out. This is normal for most medications, so it was to be expected that I would still have this problem when eating the cheese nightly. As for eating the cheese, so far, it has made my dreams more realistic and common. My dreams are mostly random and do not seem to have any pattern. They are happening more often and are longer than they usually are. I still remember them in the morning, and some of them have left me confused. The first night, I dreamt about the middle school bus coming at the same time as the high school bus. I was worried that my sister, a current freshman, would be late and miss the bus. She ended up coming out on time because the middle schoolers got on the bus before we did. The morning after this dream, we had a substitute bus driver, and my bus was twenty minutes late. Cecillia also had a sign after her first cheese dream, as she bumped into someone she usually does not see in the hall who happened to be in her dream. Lela and Shelby both also had dreams, which is usual for Lela, but not for Shelby.
Cecillia’s Perspective:
Over the past week, I have eaten cheese before bed every night. It is a known myth that eating cheese before bed can increase the chance of having odd dreams at night. During my cheese analysis, I definitely had weird dreams.
I commonly dream and have elaborate and vivid ones when I do so dreaming isn’t out of the ordinary for me. It wasn’t just me who did this experiment. I was also accompanied by three of my classmates, and even our teacher joined in. The first night I dreamed of a serial killer who could change and morph into different people and manipulate easily, I was trapped in a building trying to hide from them, and when I looked out the window, there was a giant field, and a guy I knew was standing in the field stiffly and he was a skin-walker. I woke up feeling uneasy because of how real the dream felt, even if it was potentially unrealistic. The next day at school, I was walking to class, and I saw the guy in the field from my dream, and he bumped into me. It was odd because I normally never see him down that hallway in the morning, and after the dream I had, it felt closely related.
The next night, I had another dream, but it wasn’t as vivid. I was at a store and the aisles were cramped and close together. I kept being shoved through the store by other people, and I was lost and looking for something. It then switched, and I was in an odd living room with a small kitten that I had never seen before, but I felt as if I knew the kitten well. I didn’t dwell on this dream and mainly just shrugged it off.
The next night I had a dream that I was at school, but there were small tight bunk bed cubbies that we had to stay in while we were there. My friend was there with me, and we were collecting odd things and searching for our other friend, who was hiding from school security. The dream is fuzzy to me now, but it was strange when it happened because none of it had a correlation to anything at all. I don’t remember the other dreams that I had, but I definitely remember dreaming.
After these past few days, I feel as if maybe the myth has some truth to it. My mom and my sister both stated that they also have strange dreams if they eat cheese before bed, but maybe it’s just a coincidence. I think this experiment was interesting and definitely changed my view on the whole thing from when I first heard about it.
As for the rest of the cheese dream journey, we will see what is to come. May our dreams be long and vivid and the moon be made of cheese.
