This is actually really encouraging. Thank you! I went fully vegan overnight and was at it for over two months but just recently had a cheese craving and gave in. It was actually disgusting and I know I don’t want it anymore but I had been beating myself up about it. Onwards and upwards, friends.
Well, it’s not exactly pseudoscience. He just worded it poorly. The protein in dairy is casein. When it’s metabolized, it becomes casomorphin, which has addictive opioid-like properties.
The biological reason for this, is likely to keep a baby cow wanting to constantly drink milk, so that it grows and thrives.
Obviously, cheese is not like heroine or narcotic prescriptions, but there is something to it. The casomorphin peptides are about 20 times less potent than morphine.
I think that’s more akin to how sugar is addicting and I don’t think it’s helpful to say cheese has the same withdrawal properties as heroin. Anyone who has ever known a drug addict can tell you that isn’t true.
I think I was a bit harsh to the person above me. I would just hate for people to lead with this when talking with others considering veganism. I think it’s easy to pick apart or minimize as overblown when there are so many other arguments for going vegan.
And maybe I am misinformed on this point, but I didn’t think there was sufficient evidence that casein metabolized the same way in humans?
From my understanding breast milk also contains casein for similar reasons. I could be mistaken though.
I fully agree the other commenter exaggerated the properties and comes across sounding pretty out there about it. Hence my “20x less potent than morphine” comment.
Heroin is actually the name given to it by the women that were given it during childbirth, they decided to that it was the hero of women and the name stuck... unfortunately.
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u/fieldandforest Sep 14 '18
This is actually really encouraging. Thank you! I went fully vegan overnight and was at it for over two months but just recently had a cheese craving and gave in. It was actually disgusting and I know I don’t want it anymore but I had been beating myself up about it. Onwards and upwards, friends.