A wise cartoon Cheetah had once said, “It ain’t easy bein cheesy,” but we are now understanding that maybe it is in fact extremely easy to be cheesy. A recent study conducted by the University of Michigan is saying that they have shown evidence for the fact that cheese is one of the most addictive foods. News networks are running with this idea saying that cheese is as addictive as crack cocaine. Crack cocaine is the most addictive form of cocaine known as a “free base” form. This comes from the deprotonating of the amine group of cocaine hydrochloride, which makes it more efficient to smoke.
The study published in the U.S. National Library of Medicine shows evidence that food addiction is a tangible thing, but just keep in mind that food addiction is much different than drug addiction. Researchers were looking to identify the most addictive foods by having 500 participants complete the Yale Food Addiction Scale. This survey is designed to show if someone does or does not have an addiction to food. Unsurprisingly the food that was rated the most addictive was pizza. The main reason was due to the amount of processed cheese on it.
The National Institute of Health Dairy guidelines (yes that’s a real organization) says that your recommended daily cheese intake should be around 1.5 ounces of cheese. To put that in perspective, a large cheese pizza has around 5 ounces of cheese on it. So if you are a normal human and eat more than a few slices, you’re already over the amount of cheese you should ingest on a daily basis. The more cheese you eat, the more "addicted" you become.
But why is cheese so darn addicting? That answer lies in 2 parts. The first part being that it is incredibly processed. In rat studies looking at addiction-like reward dysfunction, researchers found that rats showed addiction-like behavior to foods that are processed, such as cheesecake, but showed no similar behavior to their regular rat food. The second part of the answer to the question of, “why is cheese so addictive” is due to the way the human body breaks down milk proteins. Your body cannot fully break down the amino acid chain of casein (a protein in all milk products), which leaves a leftover product called casomorphins. Casomorphins do what any other addictive chemical does, which is binding to you dopamine receptors to activate the reward centers of your brain. This can cause similar effects (to a much lesser extent) of heroin and morphine.
The big thing to take away from this is that claiming something is addictive is very tricky. Is cheese addictive? Kind of. The casomorphins in your body do trigger the reward centers of your brain just like other addictive substances. However, this study helps people be more aware of what they choose to eat and why. In conclusion, go ahead and grab some pizza or mac and cheese, because things can trigger your opioid system but not be classified as addictive. So unless you’re skipping class to eat a wheel of cheese, or spending your hard earned cheddar on pizza every day, it’s okay to let your cheese eating habits brie.
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/scicurious/no-cheese-not-just-crack
Image taken from Family Guy
Image taken from Family Guy
Cute title. I love the graphic. The chemistry is interesting and you summarize it quite well. I assume the structure is casomorphin. Presumably the prolines constrain the structure so that it resembles cocaine enough to bind to dopamine receptors. This chemistry is a reminder that nature produces species with names like casein and casomorphin which sound pretty "chemical". It would be helpful to link to the LATimes article in the text. A good general interest publication.
ReplyDelete