Cheese and crack-ers
The ‘dairy crack’ dilemma By Jake Yapp
Well, here we are at Vegan Freshers’ Week, aka Veganuary, and the new recruits are beginning the bewildering process of staring at the backs of packets and wondering why everything, from bread to Salt and Vinegar Crisps (I’m looking at YOU, Co-op) contains skimmed milk powder. Over the next few weeks, their skills will develop exponentially, until they can scan a list of ingredients in under two seconds. If you are one of the new recruits, giving it a go this month, then a heartfelt WELCOME, and thank you so much for taking the plunge.
If you’re here, then you have Had A
Quiet Word With Yourself About Cheese. Cheese is to vegetarians what bacon is to omnivores. Time and time again, would-be vegans have plaintively said to me ‘but… but… But CHEESE’, and I have nodded sagely (to be honest, I look more constipated than sage).
The last non-vegan thing I ever knowingly bought, 10 years and three months ago, was a cheese sandwich from a railway station outlet. I can still remember it. Crisp, fluffy baguette with sharp cheddar, sliced tomato and — and this is genius — mayonnaise with black pepper.
I cannot describe how delicious this sandwich was.
I had been vegan for maybe two whole days, and I was in a hurry, and I was hungry, and frankly, I was resenting being vegan. And I wanted cheese. Man, I was craving cheese. I was angry about it. And so, in some sort of defiance (defiance of what? My own values? Wow) I bought that sandwich and I chewed down on it like a wolf on a snow hare in January.
Afterwards, I didn’t feel quite so good.
I’d had my hit, and now I was left with a fairly wretched sense of self-loathing and failure. Still, though. That was it. Forever.
But the cheese struggle is real. It is,
literally, addictive. I thought it was just my own weakness, but cheese contains casein, which releases little proteins called casomorphines. And — do you know what they do? They swim up to your brain and they latch onto the same receptors as heroin does. You are literally getting a druggy hit from your ploughman’s. It’s so potent that Neal D. Barnard, in his book
The Cheese Trap, describes it as ‘dairy crack’. So, no wonder it’s so damn hard to give up on.
There’s a truly brilliant reason why cow’s milk does this. Consider a cow, living her natural life, out in the wild, free to roam and graze. And consider her calf, an amazing little animal, able to walk within seconds of being born, and filled with the curiosity that cows seem to have. Well, what’s to stop that calf from wandering off, chasing a butterfly, and getting lost?
Casomorphines. A little tiny hit. Just enough for the calf, after a little while, to get the craving for another feed. Just enough to keep that calf from wandering off too far. Just to get them through those vulnerable early years. It’s brilliant.
The problem is, that when you take that milk, and you don’t use it as it is intended — when you concentrate it down, removing the water and turning it into cheese… You make that addictive effect many, many times more potent.
Before I went vegan, I had a friend called John, who was vegan, and occasionally he’d come round and we’d play video games and I would order pizza. This was in 2003, when nobody was vegan (apologies to any OG vegans reading this; I WORSHIP YOU), and pizzas absolutely were not vegan. And he would break his vegan rules at my house, and eat the pizza. And he’d lie on my floor, burbling, insensate and happy. I have only just realised that my flat was literally his dirty little crack den.
My knee-jerk reaction is to feel ashamed of that. And, you know I am. But I think we are allowed to frame our behaviour and choices in the past in the broader context of the culture we live in, and the information we had. We are humans, with little brains that can be pretty easily manipulated. But with the right information, and a little willpower, we can overcome a lot.
So if you’re starting out on this path, and you’re finding it hard, just bear in mind how much you’re overcoming. And to me, what you’re doing makes you a hero. And I’m sorry if that sounds a little, uh. Cheesy.