The brain relies on a range of nutrients for optimal functioning. However, the causal nature between dietary components and human intelligence are still unclear. This study integrates Mendelian randomization (MR) and genome-wide associations analyses to investigate the relationships. The results show that cheese exerts the most remarkable genetic correlation and causal association with cognition-related traits. We conduct a large-scale meta-analysis of genome-wide associations studies (GWAS) consisting of over 800,000 participants and discover 71 genetic determinants for cheese consumption. Additional MR using the GWAS results recovers the causal effects of cheese on all the cognition-related traits, and also reveals its effects on education, psychological states and gene expressions in multiple brain tissues. Additionally, knockout mouse models and pathway enrichment analysis indicate that the loci mapped genes are involved in cognitive functions and brain characteristics. In conclusion, our comprehensive analysis supports the potential benefits of cheese consumption on human intelligence.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32402112) and Jiangxi Provincial Natural Science Foundation (20242BAB20323).

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The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below:

https://gwas.mrcieu.ac.uk/ https://www.ebi.ac.uk/gwas/

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All data produced in the present study are available upon reasonable request to the authors