If you have trouble stopping yourself from finishing an entire wheel of camembert (who doesn’t?), it could be because of your brain and not your lack of willpower.
According to Thrillist, founder and president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine Dr Neal Barnard, has called cheese “dairy crack” and say 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.”
Also making cheese so irresistible is the fat content coupled with high levels of salt – two things are brains have evolved to really, really enjoy.
But lucky for us, even though our brains react to cheese similarly to morphine, our favourite block of blue doesn’t have the same brain-destroying compounds as the drug.
Which means we can keep on eating, right?
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