Many people think that English novelist Charles Dickens is the source of this particular cheese myth, because his character Scrooge blames his nocturnal visions on the crumb of cheese he eats before going to bed in A Christmas Carol.
A more modern-day suspect upholding this particular myth is a midcentury antidepressant, the side effects of which can include nightmares. Before experts fully understood this drug, they implicated cheese as the culprit. (Today, people taking this drug are warned against eating cheese, as the combination can be fatal.)
There’s been little research into the relationship between
cheese and nightmares, possibly because most academics
don’t believe any such relationship exists. The British Cheese Board is rumoured to have conducted a study on the subject, but it hasn’t appeared in any peer-reviewed journals, and therefore seems to be more of a marketing exercise.
