But what we're seeing on a large scale of addiction that beats them all is an addiction to food. I'd have to guess that it's more the norm to be addicted to food than not be addicted to it.
This article talks about how our brains can very easily become addicted to food.
Well, not really addiction. But Dr. Kessler (whose the former head of the FDA)says that millions of people fall into "hypereating," which is when you eat high calorie, high fat, high sugar foods even when you're not hungry.
Food now has become so processed with fat and sugar, that you basically don't even need to chew anymore. You just stick it in your mouth, roll it around a little bit and down the gut pipe it goes.
From the article:
At issue is how the brain becomes primed by different stimuli. Neuroscientists increasingly report that fat-and-sugar combinations in particular light up the brain's dopamine pathway — its pleasure-sensing spot — the same pathway that conditions people to alcohol or drugs.
Where did you experience the yum factor? That's the cue, sparking the brain to say, "I want that again!" as you drive by a restaurant or plop before the TV.
"You're not even aware you've learned this," says Dr. Nora Volkow, chief of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and a dopamine authority who has long studied similarities between drug addiction and obesity.
It really is a true case of Pavlov's dog. You eat something, see it again, and eat it again even though you're not hungry because your brain said "that was good before, let's eat it again!"
More from the article:
First, the team found that even well-fed rats will work increasingly hard for sips of a vanilla milkshake with the right fat-sugar combo but that adding sugar steadily increases consumption. Many low-fat foods substitute sugar for the removed fat, doing nothing to help dieters eat less, Kessler and University of Washington researchers concluded.
Which is why the entire change to low-fat food back in the 80s and 90s is a complete disaster. Dietary fat makes you feel full. You pull that out, substitute it with sugar, and you can keep going and going and going.
And this paragraph I think is really interesting:
Unhealthy food has changed in the other direction. Foods high in fat, sugar and salt tend to be cheap; they're widely sold; and advertising links them to good friends and good times, even as social norms changed to make snacking anytime, anywhere acceptable.
Think about it. How many times have you called up your friends and said "Hey! Come on over for a fun night of eating lettuce and carrots while drinking water!!" It's just the image that companies and advertisers have used to show that eating their products (as unhealthy as they are) is what will make a night out with some friends and enjoyable time.
The solution? Kessler states that you need to retrain the brain and to think "I'm going to hate myself if I eat this." But I can see that causing a big problem when you actually slip up and eat it, become depressed, and eat more of it.
But taking the same concept of where we eat something and see it again and eat it again even though you're not hungry and changing it to other habits like exercise, might be something to look into.
I like where this research is going though and I hope we get more information on how we can change those neurological sparks away from overeating and more towards healthy living.
www.leanbodyfitness.com
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