Opiates on a cracker: Is cheese addictive?

How many times have I heard carnivores and lacto-ovo vegetarians say to me, 'I can give up anything except cheese. I love cheese.'

What's the deal with cheese? It doesn't taste or smell good, if you are honest with yourself about it.  Like alcohol, tobacco and other bad-for-you substances, you have to acquire a taste for it. Ultimately, it's the brain associating the taste with the subsequent pleasurable feelings that leads us to 'love' cheese. (And chocolate, and beer, and wine...)

Research by Dr. Neal Barnard of PCRM, the author of Breaking the Food Seduction: Behind Food Cravings and Seven Steps to End Them Naturally, has shown that naloxene, an opiate-blocker used to treat morphine and heroin overdoses, reduces the desire for chocolate, sugar, cheese and meat. This suggests, writes Barnard, that "their attraction does indeed come from drug-like effects."

Amy Lanou, nutrition director of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, says that it's something called casein that makes cheese addictive. "Cheese is a concentrate of protein and fat, and casein is a type of protein found naturally in milk. Caseins convert to casomorphines, which are chemically similar to morphine, when they break down during digestion. It's these casomorphines that are addictive," says Lanou. "All mammalian mothers' milk contains casomorphines so that the young will return to the breast for milk." Since we are the only mammal that regularly drinks the milk of other animals, Lanou posits that it's this process that's behind humanity's affection for cheese.

Cheese contains far more casein than in cow or human milk, and holds other drug-like compounds as well, such as PEA, phenyethylamine, an amphetamine-like chemical. (Chocolate also contains PEA, but according to Dr. Neal Barnard in Breaking the Food Seduction, cheese contains 10 times more PEA than chocolate!)

So. Maybe that's the reason you think you can give up anything but cheese.

Here are some reasons why you really ought to make the effort to end your cheese addiction:

• It's fattening.
• It is full of saturated fat, which is linked to atherosclerosis, heart attack and stroke
• It is linked to cancer of various types, including breast cancer
• It is high in calcium, but it leaches calcium from the bones! (That's not something you're going to hear from the dairy industry, so you may not believe me, seeing as most of the western world has been brainwashed by big meat and dairy)
• Did I mention that it's fattening?
• At the risk of sounding like a militant vegan, cheese is gross anyway. It's like the crusty scrapings from inside of a nursing mother's bra. Yummy.
• And lastly, it is fattening.

It wasn't hard to give up ...

at least, I didn't think so.  I can't go so far as to say that the thought of cheese doesn't still sound good to me, but I am finding that without smothering foods in cheese I actually taste their flavors much more.  Cheese tends to cover things up.  I have bean and rice burritos as a quick lunch option, and I've come to really enjoy them without cheese.  Hubby (omnivore) doesn't mind eating my vegan burritos either -- though he will put cheese and sour cream on them.  Eww.  Hey ... and add to your list of reasons the amount of PUS in milk and dairy products, especially concentrated in cheese.  That worked for me.

Giving it up

I didn't find it that hard to cut my cheese intake way back. Anna's right about cheese covering up the tastes of foods. The only cheeses I really still enjoy are the semi-soft kinds, like gorgonzola, which I like the flavor of on a salad. However, I found that after six months with no milk, I did have a hankering to have it back. Soy milk just isn't as good on cereal or with a peanut butter sandwich. I've read all the negative things about dairy, however, and I'm determined to keep it to a minimum. However, I cannot agree with you that cheese doesn't taste good. Anything with that much fat in it tastes good.

The First Step is Admitting You Have A Cheese Problem

As a hardcore cheese addict for most of my life that was really interesting reading. I think cheese is one of the most dominant reason for me having been overweight as a teenager, and my Dad is still a cheese-addict, and he's a large chap!

I wouldn't say that cheese "doesn't smell or taste good", I think it does both these things (depending on the type of cheese), and real cheese definitely smells/tastes a lot better than low fat or vegan alternatives!

"like the crusty scrapings from inside of a nursing mother's bra" - I think that's probably put me off dairy products for a good while now, thank you! haha :)

The taste

Well, about the taste, I like cheesy taste, too, but I think that's because I learned to like it. Most babies will make horrible faces when they first taste cheese, but according to what I've been reading, as soon as they learn to associate the taste with the effects on brain chemistry (the pleasure aspect), they learn to love it. Supposedly that's why we all love the taste. So I've read.