Mmm cheese.
It's oozy, it's rich, it's just so good. This is not merely one cheese lover's opinion, it's a biological truth.
"Cheese actually has something called casomorphin, which is a hormone that's released when casein, which is milk protein, breaks down in your body," chef Miyoko Schinner explains in the forthcoming Netflix docuseries, titled "You Are What You Eat."
"It's a feel-good hormone, so when you eat it, somehow you just feel high."
The cheese 'high' is a result of high concentrations of casein, which we convert into a mild opioid
This isn't the first time someone has accused cheese of being addictive. Dr. Neal Barnard, a plant-based eating evangelist, wrote an entire book about the "Cheese Trap." And there is some truth to the idea.
Milk has a moderate amount of casein in it, and its conversion to a mild opioid in the body helps comfort nursing babies and put them to sleep. But cheesemaking bumps up the protein content of dairy, super-charging the casein. This translates to a bigger dopamine hit for us.
Schinner first experienced this cheese high herself when she was eight years old. Having been raised in a Japanese-American household, there wasn't usually any dairy on the menu. But when she finally got a chance to taste a fresh slice of pizza at a party, she knew this was it.
"I thought, if I eat this pizza, I can finally become an American!" she said. "I took a bite of this pizza and I was just like 'Oh. My. God.' It just was transformative."
Can vegan cheese ever have the same feel-good effect?
Even though Schinner knows cheese can be "biologically addicting," she's trying to make some decent vegan substitutes. She is the creator of Miyoko's Creamery, a California-based vegan butter and cheese company, which aims to rival the taste of real dairy.
"It's so interesting about cheese, that people can't give it up," she said. "I meet people all the time who say 'I would go vegan, except for the cheese.'"
Even Blue Zone cardiologist Gary Fraser, who's spent decades studying the health benefits of plant-based diets, and who has homed in on some of the dangers of eating too much meat and dairy, says cheese is the one dairy product he still regularly eats to this day. (He's comforted to know that cheese has a special, protective cheese matrix, which milk does not. This unique protein and calcium structure may be the reason why cheese and yogurt aren't associated with breast and prostate cancer, in the same way that milk is.)
Having our biology working against her doesn't stop Schinner from trying to replicate that unctuous pizza cheese she first fell in love with as a child, in a vegan format. Schinner recently formulated a vegan pizza cheese that goes into the oven looking like liquid cheese whiz, but comes out amazingly gooey, with a dairy-like texture.
"You Are What You Eat," a four-part docuseries, premieres on Netflix on January 1, 2024.
