Doctor’s Tip: Health problems associated with cheese
Dr. Greg Feinsinger
In 1985 Dr. Neal Barnard founded the Physician Committer for Responsible Medicine “to bring a new emphasis on prevention and nutrition into medical practice and to improve how research is conducted” (without influence from Big Food and Big Pharma).
Dr. Barnard has published several books, including “The Cheese Trap, How Breaking a Surprising Addiction Will Help You Lose Weight, Gain Energy, and Get Healthy.” Many people who go on a plant-based, whole food diet for health and/or environmental reasons have difficulty giving up cheese in particular.
It turns out that when cheese is digested it releases casomorphins, that attach to the same opioid receptors in the brain that heroin or morphine attach to. The fat and large quantities of salt in cheese are additional factors that make cheese addictive — salt, sugar and fat are all addictive.
There were no cheese factories in the U.S. until 1851. In 1909 the average American ate 3.8 pounds of cheese a year. Now cheese is everywhere — from snacks to pizza to cheeseburgers — and the average American now consumes more than 33 pounds a year.
According to “The Cheese Trap,” the following are the main health problems associated with cheese:
• The process that results in cheese concentrates calories. A cup of milk has 149 calories; a cup of milted cheddar has close to 1,000 — mainly from fat, which tends to make people fat.
· The cheese-making process concentrates dairy proteins, which are fine for baby cows but which in some humans trigger respiratory symptoms including asthma, migraine headaches, arthritis and skin conditions including acne.
· The cheese-making process also concentrates cholesterol and saturated fat — the latter causes the liver to make more LDL (bad cholesterol). Higher LDL levels contribute to cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s.
· Large quantities of sodium (salt) are added to cheese to stop bacterial growth and…
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