The Challenge

Hubby and I had a conversation the other day about cheese.

I was reading an editorial where the author was fed up about the conflcting views regarding what pregnant women can and can't consume.  One of the items in question had to do with cheese.  Some say mould-ripened cheese, blue-veined cheese and soft unpasteurised goat and sheep cheese's should be avoided.  Other's say that although processed and hard cheese, cottage cheese and ricotta are considered safe, there is no guarantee.   I understand it's due to a bacteria called listeria, but wondered if there was more than that.

Hence, my conversation with Hubby.

He claimed that cheese is actually addictive and could be one of the hardest foods for humans to give up.  Reason being: cheese contains opiates.  Not a huge amount, but enough to keep us hooked. 

Skeptical, I did some research.  Health Diaries had an article "Casein and Cheese More Addictive than Chocolate?" where it explained the cheese-opiate relationship.

The first hint of a biochemical explanation came in 1981, when scientists at Wellcome Research Laboratories in Research Triangle Park, N.C., found a substance in dairy products that looked remarkably like morphine. After a complex series of tests, they determined that, surprisingly enough, it actually was morphine. By a fluke of nature, the enzymes that produce opiates are not confined to poppies -- they also hide inside cows' livers. So traces of morphine can pass into the animal's bloodstream and end up in milk and milk products.

...[O]piates hide inside casein, the main dairy protein. As casein molecules are digested, they break apart to release tiny opiate molecules, called casomorphins. One of these compounds has about one-tenth the opiate strength of morphine. The especially addicting power of cheese may be due to the fact that the process of cheese-making removes water,lactose and whey proteins so that casein is concentrated. Scientists are now trying to tease out whether these opiate molecules work strictly within the digestive tract or whether they pass into the bloodstream and reach the brain directly.

VegSource contained a similar article Breaking the Food Seduction.

Each article references Eli Hazum, the scientist who made this discovery.  I haven't found the exact paper or discovery that VegSource and Health Diaries cite. 

Nevertheless, this information has definitely piqued my interested.  So, I have decided to cut cheese out of my diet for one month.

How hard could this be.