This delicious food is as addictive as hard drugs… and could be the reason you can’t lose weight

The majority of us have this food in our fridges and it’s obvious why: it’s so darn delicious. But health experts are now warning that it could be as addictive and as hard drugs…

A special chemical found in addictive drugs has been located in a dairy product a vast amount of us love: cheese. Why, though?

Using the Yale Food Addiction Scale, designed to measure a person’s dependence on, scientists found that cheese is particularly potent because it contains casein, a substance present in all dairy products. It can trigger the brain’s opioid receptors which are linked to addiction, which any cheese lover can tell you makes sense. Cheese is rarely enjoyed in tiny pieces!

It’s no laughing matter however, with research showing just how problematic an addiction to cheese can be.

According to Independent.co.uk, researchers asked 120 undergraduates to answer the Yale Food Addiction Scale, and were asked to choose between 35 foods of varying nutritional value.

A second part to the study involved 384 people who were presented with the same items of food, but in a hierarchical linear order.

Researchers behind the study, published in the Public Library of Science One journal, found that fat was linked to problematic eating whether or not participants were addicted to food.

Erica Schulte, one of the authors of the research, told Techtimes that fat appeared to equally anticipate problematic eating, whether or not the participants had food addiction manifestations.

Dr. Neal Barnard of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine said that cheese has a chemical called casein, which disintegrates during digestion to secrete a surge of casomorphins.

From what researchers know from previous studies, casomorphins bind with opioid gates, the same used to control addiction.

According to the University of Illinois Extension Program, caseins makes up 80% of the proteins in cow milk. While not yet much is known just how much of an opioid effect casomorphins have, some food scientists go so far as to describe cheese as “dairy crack“.

Tell us, how often do you eat cheese? Will this make you reconsider how much you eat?