I used to be a cheese addict but I’m really much feta now
Bonnie now has a new addiction – and luckily it’s a healthy one.
She has substituted cheese with every meal for fruit.
“Five-a-day? More like 15-a-day sometimes. I snack on fruit all the time. I actually have to cut down on my fruit intake some weeks.”
The 53-year-old now has banana on toast for breakfast, soup for lunch with some fruit – and for dinner she has soup with chicken and veg or a baked potato.
In the evenings Bonnie snacks on natural yoghurt and strawberries.
The former cheese-aholic has not been tempted to relapse since going cold turkey.
It is actually chocolate she misses the most – although she does allow herself a cracker and cheese as a treat every few weeks.
She said: “I don’t miss it because I feel like a totally different person since changing my diet. I don’t feel as slow and sluggish as I did.
“I’ve got more energy, I want to get up and do things and I’m so delighted about it, people have to double-take when I say hello or wave at them.”
In 2015, a study published in the Public Library of Science One journal found that cheese contained a chemical found in addictive drugs.
The authors reported that the protein casein was the cause of “cheesey” cravings.
But Dr Charlotte Hardman, lecturer in psychological and food studies at Liverpool University, dismissed the 2015 study.
She said: “People develop unhealthy behaviours towards certain foods, but in terms of an actual substance addiction, I’m not so sure.”