Think you’re addicted to cheese? You’re probably right!

If you’re the type of person who always puts a slice of pepper jack on your hamburger, or finds that you can’t get enough gooey mozzarella on a pizza, you might think that you have an addiction to cheese – and new research indicated that you might be right.
According to the New York Daily News and the Los Angeles Times, a University of Michigan-led study published this week in the US National Library of Medicine examined why certain types of food seem to be more addictive than others. The authors asked approximately 500 students to fill out a survey, the Yale Food Addiction Scale, to determine if they had such a habit.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, pizza topped the list, but perhaps surprisingly, the authors believe the supposed cause of this addiction is the pizza’s cheese. Specifically, the primary reason was one ingredient within that cheese: casein, a peptide (protein fragment) which is known to release a type of opiate (casomorphins) during the digestive process.
When released, the opiates activate dopamine receptors in the brain’s reward center, triggering the “addictive element” of cheese, registered dietitian Cameron Wells said, according to the Los Angeles Times. The chemical, combined with the sugar in the tomato sauce and the carbs found in the crust, is what helps make pizza so darn addictive, The Telegraph explained.
‘Dairy crack’
How addictive is cheese? According to The Telegraph, the average US resident consumes about 35 pounds worth of the processed dairy product every year, and one expert, Dr. Neal Barnard of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, even referred to it as “dairy crack.”
As the Daily Mail explained, milk actually only contains a tiny amount of casein. However, one pound of cheese requires nearly 10 pounds of milk, meaning that the chemical is present in large amounts and high concentrations in slices of cheddar, Gouda, and Swiss, enhancing the effect.
The problem becomes worse when the cheese products are highly processed, the UK newspaper added. Animal-based studies have found that highly-processed foods, or those with added fat or refined carbs, could trigger addictive eating behaviors. Furthermore, people suffering from food allergies or higher BMI have reported experiencing issues with such products.
Study co-author Nicole Avena, an assistant professor of pharmacology and systems therapeutics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, told the Daily Mail that the study was “a first step towards identifying specific foods, and properties of foods, which can trigger this addictive response” and could “change the way we approach obesity treatment.”
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