Doctors say cheese could be as addictive as drugs
Look, we’ve all be there: you’re enjoying a tasty cheese platter, perhaps with a glass of red, and before you know it, you’ve devoured the entire wheel of camembert. You’re not even sure how it happened; all you know is the cheese was too delicious to stop.
But before you berate yourself for your lack of willpower, stop – because it may not be your willpower but that the cheese is simply too addictive.
According to Thrillist, Dr Neal Barnard, founder and president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, has called cheese “dairy crack” because your brain reacts to a particular protein in it the way it would any other addictive substance.
“These protein fragments can attach to the opiate receptors in your brain,” Dr Barnard says. “As the name implies, casomorphins are casein-derived morphine-like compounds.”
Cheese also has high fat and salt content – two other things that our brains enjoy.
However, lucky for all the cheese lovers out there, even though our brains may react to cheese similarly to morphine, it doesn’t have any brain-destroying compounds as the drug.
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