Food Addiction: Could It Explain Why 70 Percent of America Is Fat?
OUR GOVERNMENT AND FOOD INDUSTRY both encourage more "personal responsibility" when it comes to battling the obesity epidemic and its associated diseases. They say people should exercise more self-control, make better choices, avoid over-eating, and reduce their intake of sugar-sweetened drinks and processed food.
We are lead to believe there is no good food or bad food—that it’s all a matter of balance. This sounds good in theory, except for one thing …
New discoveries in science prove that industrial, processed, sugar-, fat-, and salt-laden food—food that is made in plant, rather than grown on a plant, as Michael Pollan would say—is biologically addictive.
Imagine a foot high pile of broccoli, or a giant bowl of apple slices. Do you know anyone who would binge on broccoli or apples? On the other hand, imagine a mountain of potato chips, a whole bag of cookies, or a pint of ice cream.
Those are easy to imagine vanishing in an unconscious, reptilian brain eating frenzy. Broccoli is not addictive, but cookies, chips, or soda absolutely can become addictive drugs.
The “just say no” approach to drug addiction hasn’t fared very well. It won’t work for our industrial food addiction either. Tell a cocaine or heroin addict or an alcoholic to “just say no” after that first snort, shot, or drink. It’s not that simple. There are specific biological mechanisms that drive addictive behavior.
Nobody chooses to be a heroin addict, cokehead, or drunk. Nobody chooses to be fat either. The behaviors arise out of primitive neurochemical reward centers in the brain that override normal willpower and overwhelm our ordinary biological signals that control hunger.
Consider:
- Why do cigarette smokers continue to smoke even though they know smoking will give them cancer and heart disease?
- Why do less than 20 percent of alcoholics successfully quit drinking?
- Why do most addicts continue to use cocaine and heroin despite their lives being destroyed?
- Why does quitting caffeine lead to irritability and headaches?
It is because these substances are all biologically addictive.
Why is it so hard for obese people to lose weight despite the social stigma and health consequences such as high blood pressure, diabetes,
Few of us are free from this addictive pattern. If you examine your own behavior and relationship to sugar, in particular, you will likely find that your behavior around sugar and the biological effects of over-consumption of sugar match up perfectly. Many of the criteria above are likely to apply to you. We blame the fat person. But how can we blame a two-year-old for being fat? How much choice do they have? Researchers from Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity validated a "food addiction" scale.(i) Here are a few of the points on the scale that are used to determine if you have a food addiction. Does any of this sound familiar? If it does you may be an "industrial food addict." Based on these criteria and others many of us, including most obese children, are "addicted" to industrial food. Here are some of the scientific findings confirming that food can, indeed, be addictive:(ii) Remember the movie Super Size Me, where Morgan Spurlock ate three super-sized meals from McDonald’s every day? What struck me about that film was not that he gained 30 pounds or that his cholesterol went up, or even that he got a fatty liver. What was surprising was the portrait it painted of the addictive quality of the food he ate. At the beginning of the movie, when he ate his first super-sized meal, he threw it up, just like a teenager who drinks too much alcohol at his first party. By the end of the movie, he only felt "well" when he ate that junk food. The rest of the time he felt The End of Overeating, David Kessler, MD, the former head of the Food and Drug Administration, describes the science of how food is made into drugs by the creation of hyper-palatable foods that leads to neuro-chemical addiction. This binging leads to profound physiological consequences that drive up calorie consumption and lead to weight gain. In a Harvard Study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, overweight adolescents consumed an extra 500 calories a day when allowed to eat junk food as compared to days when they weren’t allowed to eat junk food. They ate more because the food triggered cravings and addiction. Like an alcoholic after the first drink, once these kids started eating processed food full of the sugar, fat, and salt that triggered their brain’s reward centers, they couldn’t stop. They were like rats in a cage.(iv) Stop and think about this for one minute. If you were to eat 500 more calories in a day, that would equal 182,500 calories a year. Let’s see … if you have to eat an extra 3,500 calories to gain one pound, that’s a yearly weight gain of 52 pounds! If high-sugar, high-fat, calorie-rich, nutrient-poor, processed, fast, junk food is indeed, addictive, what does that mean? How should that influence our approach to obesity? What implications does it have for government policies and regulation? Are there legal implications? If we are allowing and even promoting addictive substances in our children’s diets, how should we handle that? I can assure you, Big Food isn't going to make any changes voluntarily. They would rather ignore this science. They have three mantras about food. Unfortunately, this is little more than propaganda from an industry interested in profit, not in nourishing the nation. Do We Really Have a Choice About What We Eat? The biggest sham in food industry strategy and government food policy is advocating and emphasizing individual choice and personal responsibility to solve our obesity and chronic disease epidemic. We are told if people just wouldn’t eat so much, exercised more, and took care of themselves, we would be fine. We don’t need to change our policies or environment. We don’t want the government telling us what to do. We want free choice. But are your choices free, or is Big Food driving behavior through insidious marketing techniques? The reality is that many people live in food deserts where they can’t buy an apple or carrot, or live in communities that have no sidewalks or where it is unsafe to be out walking. We blame the fat person. But how can we blame a two-year-old for being fat? How much choice do they have? We live in a toxic food environment, a nutritional wasteland. School lunchrooms and vending machines overflow with junk food and "sports drinks". Most of us don’t even know what we’re eating. Fifty percent of meals are eaten outside the home and most home cooked meals are simply microwavable industrial food. Restaurants and chains provide no clear menu labeling. Did you know that a single order of Outback Steakhouse cheese fries is 2,900 calories or a Starbucks venti mocha latte is 508 calories? Environmental factors (like advertising, lack of menu labeling, and others) and the addictive properties of “industrial food” when added together override our normal biological or psychological control mechanisms. To pretend changing this is beyond the scope of government responsibility or that creating policy to help manage such environmental factors would lead to a "nanny state" is simply an excuse for Big Food to continue their unethical practices. Here are some ways we can change our food environment: We can alter the default conditions in the environment that foster and promote addictive behavior.(v) It’s simply a matter of public and political will. If we don’t, we will face an ongoing epidemic of obesity and illness across the nation. For those with personal struggles with food addiction, remember it is not a moral failing or lack of willpower. Here are five suggestions I offer my patients to help them break their food addictions. 1. Balance your blood sugar: Research studies say that low blood sugar levels are associated with LOWER overall blood flow to the brain, which means more BAD decisions. To keep your blood sugar stable: 2. Eliminate sugar and artificial sweeteners and your cravings will go away: Go cold turkey. Eliminate refined sugars, sodas, fruit juices, and artificial sweeteners from your diet, as these can trigger cravings. 3. Determine if hidden food allergies are triggering your cravings: We often crave the very foods that we have a hidden allergy to. For a simple allergy elimination program, consider trying The UltraSimple Diet, or The UltraSimple Diet Challenge Home Study Coaching Program. 4. Get 7-8 hours of sleep: Research shows that lack of sleep increases cravings. 5. Optimize Your Nutrient Status: Craving Cutting Supplements Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below--but remember, we can’t offer personal medical advice online, so be sure to limit your comments to those about taking back our health! To your good health, Mark Hyman, MD References (i) Gearhardt, A.N., Corbin, W.R., and K.D. 2009. Brownell. Preliminary validation of the Yale Food Addiction Scale. Appetite. 52(2): 430–436. (ii) Colantuoni, C., Schwenker, J., McCarthy, P., et al. 2001. Excessive sugar intake alters binding to dopamine and mu-opioid receptors in the brain. Neuroreport. 12(16): 3549–3552. (iii) Volkow, N.D., Wang, G.J., Fowler, J.S., et al. 2002. "Nonhedonic" food motivation in humans involves dopamine in the dorsal striatum and methylphenidate amplifies this effect. Synapse. 44(3): 175–180. (iv) Ebbeling CB, Sinclair KB, Pereira MA, Garcia-Lago E, Feldman HA, Ludwig DS. Compensation for energy intake from fast food among overweight and lean adolescents. JAMA. 2004 Jun 16;291(23):2828-2833. (v) Brownell, K.D., Kersh, R., Ludwig. D.S., et al. 2010. Personal responsibility and obesity: A constructive approach to a controversial issue. Health Aff (Millwood). 29(3): 379–387.
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