Cheese is like crack and salad leads us to cheese

Last week I received multiple emails entitled “cheese is crack” referring to an LA Times article.  Yeah, yeah I thought as I clicked through, I could’ve told you that. Cheese is my dietary kryptonite. What I didn’t know was this:

“Casomorphins attach to the brain’s opiate receptors to cause a calming effect in much the same way heroin and morphine do," said Barnard. And since cheese has a concentrated content of casomorphins, Barnard suggested it may be called dairy crack.

While many associate sugar with a drug-like or addictive response, I thought cheese lovers were simply eating cheese because it’s the most delicious food in the universe. I am not sure if this notion of “calming cheese” makes me want to eat more or less of it but it makes sense to me. When cheese is in my life or kitchen, it’s hard to see it in my refrigerator drawer and pass it up. Fortunately, having not been to the Farmer’s market this week, I am cheese free. Fingers crossed no casomorph withdrawal.

Note: casomorphins come from casein (milk protein), all cheese has casein even though some cheeses are lactose free.

In other nutrition news, the NY Times Sunday Review highlighted “just the idea that we can have salad leads us toillicit treats”. The article explains something called the licensing effect. The licensing effect refers to our tendency to make an unhealthy choice following a healthy one. This can be the typical “I worked out so therefore…” or in supermarket studies research shows “drop a bunch of kale into your cart and you’re more likely to head to the ice cream or beer section.” There are some ways to get around this. First, the article mentions that we all have a concept of how healthy or unhealthy we are. When we stray too far from our norm, we’re more likely to compensate. I would say the more you tend to follow a positive decision with a negative one, the more you should opt for gradual, manageable changes versus rash ones. Second, focus on the behavior and not the scale. This licensing effect can encourage us to gain weight after we’ve lost it if the focus is numerical.

So the answer isn’t to skip the kale and head directly for the cheese plate but rather something along the lines of a kale Caesar salad. We need a place for cheese and other treats, crack-like or not, so that we don’t give ourselves license to binge.

Are you a cheese addict? Or what’s your dietary kryptonite? How have you seen yourself “licensing” unhealthy choices?

When it comes to weight loss, timing is everything

It doesn’t matter how late you eat it’s the calories in the entire day, right? Nope, sorry to say that’s another one of those weight-related rumors that can be filed in wouldn’t-that-be-nice along with “a calorie is a calorie” and “everything in moderation.” When it comes to weight loss, when you eat may be as important as what you eat and is often overlooked.

A friend sent me a link to an LA Times article “Nighttime fasting may foster weight loss”  that discusses a study recently published in the journal Cell Metabolism. Researchers at the Salk Institute placed mice on different eating regimens for 100 days. One group, fed a high-fat, high-calorie diet, could eat their food whenever they wanted. Another group was given only an 8-hour window to eat their food. The differences were staggering. The group with the unhealthy diet and no time restriction became obese and encountered a host of metabolic problems even though calories and fat were approximately the same as the “8-hour” group. Furthermore, the time-restricted high calorie group was almost as lean as the control group eating regular food after 100 days. Not only was the time-limited group better off than the grazing group, they almost fared as well as those eating a healthier diet.

If you’re starting to roll your eyes and thinking that this is one study and we’re not rodents, I hear you but this is not the first we’ve heard of this. A study from 2009 found that eating at times we should be resting leads to more weight gain than daytime eating. Just as we’ve come to accept that sleep plays a role in metabolism, we may now need to realize that our metabolic pathways and digestive system need sleep or at least rest. 

In terms of putting these findings to the test, I’m not sure we need 16 hours food free. Though not impossible, we could eat breakfast at 10am and dinner at 6pm, this can be a stretch. If you’re a nighttime nosher, try the 12 hour rule; whether it’s 7pm  to 7am or 8pm to 8am, try to keep 12 hours food free. And speaking of noshing, the nutrition content of our food generally decreases the later it gets. Work with the 12 hours, you’ll sleep more soundly, reflux will be less of an issue and you may be able to get away with a little more, if you eat it at the right time. 
What time do you generally eat dinner? Do you eat anything after? Do you intend to try the 12-hour rule? Maybe it's a good strategy post Memorial Day Weekend.