I don’t know about you, but I sure do enjoy sitting down and eating some cheese and crackers. In fact, I love cheese in almost any form, regardless of whether it is sliced on a plate or sprinkled over my breakfast eggs. For many people, cheese is not just a dietary addition, it is a way of life! In any way, it is something that many of us have a hard time saying no to, but there may be a reason why that is the case…
A new study that has been published by the US national Library of medicine says that cheese addiction is as real as addiction to crack cocaine. They list a number of foods that are addictive, but some are higher on the list than others.
A group of approximately 500 students at Yale completed a questionnaire about the compulsions that they had to eating certain types of foods. This study was used to come up with the Yale Food Addiction Scale, and it showed something rather unusual. The way that a food is processed had an impact on the compulsion that we had to eating it.
According to this research, “highly processed foods share pharmacokinetic properties (e.g. concentrated dose rapid rate of absorption) with drugs abuse, due to the addiction of fat and/or refined carbohydrates and the rapid rate the refined carbohydrates are absorbed into the system.”
If you are concerned over the possibility that you are being “drugged” by cheese, you might not be too far away from the truth. Although the study is rather extensive and the report long-winded, it is suggesting that very fact.
The reason why cheese may be a particular problem is because of a protein found in milk products, known as casein. When we eat cheese, the digestion of this protein causes a release of opiates, affecting our dopamine levels, and the pleasure center of the brain. As we continue to affect those chemicals within the body, we form an addiction.
At the top of the food addiction chart is pizza, and it is there for a reason. We crave pizza, but it is actually the cheese that we may be craving. Although I’m not quite ready to give up my midnight cheese and cracker snacks or my two slice of pizza lunch, it does explain a few things.
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