Scientists have found what makes cheese so irresistible, it’s certain chemicals found in addictive drugs.
It doesn’t sound like the worse thing to be addicted to, but it is true, you can get addicted to cheese and it’s normal. A team of researchers from the University of Michigan tried their hypothesis that claims that processed foods are more addictive than others, and the answer was cheese.
They used rating system known as the Yale Food Addiction Scale, which is designed to measure a particular person’s addiction to a certain food, and cheese proved to be more addictive because of casein.
Casein is found in all dairy products, and it has the power to trigger your brain’s opioid receptors, which are linked to addiction.
In fact, the study found that processed foods in general were more associated with addiction, especially fatty foods. The top ranking foods where those containing cheese.
The study involved 120 undergraduates making a choice among 35 foods of varying nutritional value, and were then evaluated according to the Yale Food Addiction Scale.
The second phase of the experiment included yet another group of 384 people, who were presented with the same items of food, but in a hierarchical and linear order.
The full study was published in the Public Library of Science One journal and can be found here.
