It’s the news everyone’s been waiting for. Well, maybe everyone bar vegans and the lactose-intolerant.

Salty halloumi, creamy burrata, stringy mozzarella, smelly stilton, melty camembert, crumbly feta or trusty old cheddar, there’s a cheese (or ten) for all of us.

As delicious as it is, the sad truth is that cheese has for long been thought of as not very healthy.

However, a new study has found that cheese is in fact better for us than previously accepted - or at least not as bad.

The research from University College Dublin has concluded that people who eat a lot of cheese are thinner than those who don’t, and it doesn’t actually raise cholesterol levels.

Scientists studied the impact of eating dairy products - milk, cheese, yogurt, butter and cream - on 1,500 people aged between 18 and 90.

They found that the people who consumed the most dairy had lower BMIs, lower body fat percentages, smaller waists and lower blood pressure.

What’s more the participants who ate low-fat dairy tended to have higher cholesterol levels.

British Cheese Week: Causing a stink in a town near you Show all 10 1 /10 British Cheese Week: Causing a stink in a town near you British Cheese Week: Causing a stink in a town near you British Brie British Cheese Week: Causing a stink in a town near you West Country Farmhouse Cheddar: 14 individual farms are licensed to use the Protected Designation of Origin - "West Country Farmhouse Cheddar". The cheese must be made on a farm in the four counties of Devon, Cornwall, Dorset and Somerset from locally produced milk and using traditional Cheddar making techniques - including hand Cheddaring. West Country Farmhouse Cheddar is matured in the region and sold at a minimum age of 9 months and is subject to regular grading throughout its life. British Cheese Week: Causing a stink in a town near you Cheshire: Cheshire Cheese is sold at different ages and like all cheese, as it matures, its taste and texture will develop. Young Cheshire is naturally bright and white in colour. It is a firm bodied cheese with a crumbly texture that breaks down easily in the mouth. It has a mild, milky taste and aroma and is clean on the palate with a very slightly tangy finish. A red vegetable dye - annatto - is sometimes added to the milk to produce "coloured" Cheshire. Despite the difference in colour the taste and texture of the cheese is the same as its white cousin. As Cheshire matures so it becomes firmer in texture and slightly darker in colour. The flavours become more complex but the cheese remains clean tasting with no hint of bitterness. The crumbly texture remains but the cheese has a drier mouth feel. British Cheese Week: Causing a stink in a town near you Red Leicester: What we call "Red Leicester" cheese today was formerly known as "Leicestershire Cheese" - named like so many of our traditional cheeses after the County from which it originated. Traiditonally, cheese with a rich orange hue was much valued as it signified a high quality cheese - notably a Double Gloucester - made from rich creamy milk. Milk produced by cows grazing on rich grass pastures would naturally have a high carotene content which gave it an orange hue. Other regions of the country then started to colour their milk with annatto to mimic Gloucestershire cheese and so Leicestershire was routinely coloured. British Cheese Week: Causing a stink in a town near you White Stilton with Mango and Ginger: Made by Long Clawson, this cheese combines the gentle flavour of White Stilton, with the tangy flavours of Mango and Ginger. There are hundreds of types of blended cheese, the most popular using fruits and herbs with creamy cheeses such as Wensleydale and white Stilton. British Cheese Week: Causing a stink in a town near you Cornish Yarg: Cornish Yarg is alleged to be the new name for the recipe of cheese produced may years ago by a Cornish dairy farmer by the name of Gray. When it was rediscovered, it was decided that a Cornish sounding name was required and Yarg was born (as a simple reversal of the letters of the name of the former owner). Yarg is a unique cheese for although it follows a Wensleydale style recipe it differs in a number of ways. It is a smaller size than a traditional Wensleydale, it has nettle leaves wrapped around it after it has come out of the cheese press, and finally it is given a light spraying of penicillium candidum white mould to help give the cheese its unique appearance and flavour. Yarg is defined as a semi-hard cheese is deliciously creamy under the rind and slightly crumbly in the core. It has a young, fresh, slightly tangy taste. British Cheese Week: Causing a stink in a town near you Lancashire: At one time everyone in Lancashire ate Lancashire Cheese and almost all farms in the county made it in one form or another. Evidence suggests that cheese was being made in Lancashire from the 13th Century; however the style, texture and taste is unlikely to be what we recognise as Lancashire cheese today. There are three types of Lancashire cheese: Creamy Lancashire (matured for between 4 and 12 weeks), Tasty Lancashire (matured for anything over 12 weeks to 24 months), and Crumbly Lancashire (a more recent creation and a younger, less expensive cheese designed to compete with competitors such as Cheshire, Caerphilly and Wensleydale). British Cheese Week: Causing a stink in a town near you Blue Stilton: Known as the 'King of English Cheeses', Stilton takes its name from a village just south of Peterborough which was a coaching stop on the Great North Road. Today, Stilton it can only be made in the counties of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and Leicestershire to a specified recipe, as it is honoured with a certification trademark and Protected Designation of Origin status. The milk must come from the three counties and must be pasteurised before use. The cheese must be allowed to form its own crust, can only be made in a cylindrical shape, must never be pressed and must have the magical blue veins for which Stilton is famed radiating from the centre of the cheese. It is smooth and creamy with complex, with a slightly acidic flavour when young. As it matures so the texture becomes softer and creamier with a mellow flavour. British Cheese Week: Causing a stink in a town near you Sussex Charmer: Twineham Grange farm in Sussex started making a Parmesan style cheese back in the early 1980s using locally produced raw milk delivered warm to the farm. The farm used genuine Italian cheesemaking equipment and even Italian Cheesemakers working to a genuine Italian recipe. The cheese was even taken back to Italy to mature. However, when the EU Protected Food Name scheme was introduced in the 1990s the dairy was forced to drop the use of the name Parmesan and instead renamed their Italian style hard cheese "Farmers Hand". They then started to experiment with a cheese that was a cross between Cheddar and Parmesan and named it Sussex Charmer. This is a hard-pressed cheese matured for up to 1 year with the flavour profile matching perfectly the hybrid claim. The company has subsequently moved to a different location and is now called Bookham Harrison Farms. British Cheese Week: Causing a stink in a town near you Leicestershire Red: Not to be confused with Red Leicester, this is an old traditional recipe which has recently been brought back into production. Hand-made and matured to approximately six months, Aged Leicestershire Red has an open texture and a slightly sweet, nutty, caramelised flavour reminiscent of the varieties produced in the county of Nottingham, from where it originated centuries ago.

This goes against current health advice which advocates limiting intake of saturated fats (found in cheese) to keep cholesterol levels down - high blood cholesterol is strongly linked to increased risk of heart disease and stroke.

The study reinforces recent research from various countries which has suggested that saturated fat from cheese doesn’t increase blood cholesterol levels because of the unique set of nutrients it contains.

“What we saw was that in the high consumers [of cheese] they had a significantly higher intake of saturated fat than the non-consumers and the low consumers and yet there was no difference in their LDL Cholesterol levels,” said study lead author Dr Emma Feeney.

“We have to consider not just the nutrients themselves but also the matrix in which we are eating them in and what the overall dietary pattern is, so not just about the food then, but the pattern of other foods we eat with them as well.”

Interestingly, the researchers found that those who ate more cheese also consumed more carbohydrates.

Two of the study’s authors declared that they had previously been paid speaking fees from Ireland's National Dairy Council, but the others declared no conflict of interest.