Science Explains Why You Can't Resist A Fresh Slice Of Pizza
We're all just living our best life, thanks to pizza.
If I had to put my love of pizza into emoji form, it would be this:
In fact, I had it for lunch just today and pretty much every other meal of my life.
But thanks to researchers at The University of Michigan* there is now scientific evidence for why you can't keep pizza off the brain.
*GO BLUE
It turns out that highly processed foods (especially pizza which I will jump into shortly) are in a different class of foods that can trigger addictive eating habits.
"Highly processed foods share pharmacokinetic properties (e.g. concentrated dose, rapid rate of absorption) with drugs of abuse, due to the addition of fat and/or refined carbohydrates and the rapid rate [at which] the refined carbohydrates are absorbed into the system," the study explains.
First off, pizza dough and pizza sauce are packed with sugar
The average slice of pizza contains 5 grams of sugar (and that's without any added fatty meat)
And then there's cheese and pepperoni
Cheese contains the drug-like chemical casein, which triggers the same parts of the brains as drugs do. While processed meats often found as pizza toppings contain sodium nitrate which makes pepperoni and sausage absolutely irresistible.
So the next time you're sitting in front of an empty pizza box with a full stomach, you can officially blame chemicals and not your (lack of) self control.
But maybe just share that box with this little guy, or a friend or two, just to be safe.
