Ashley Hanson

Food Addiction Is a Real Addiction But abstinence isn’t an option No one has to work to score chocolate on the street. No one has to smuggle chips across borders. If you’re paying $150 for a gram of Coke, you’re paying way too much. But this doesn’t mean that food — the salts, fats, sugars, proteins, meats, and carbs — can’t get us into trouble, as much trouble as the illegal, often deadly substances that cause so much destruction. You can eat compulsively, just like some people use drugs or drink alcohol compulsively. In some cases, these compulsions can shift to full-blown addictions. You’ll end up with a vicious cycle of craving and indulging before regretting and starting it all over again. Statistics show that food might be just as addictive as drugs. Around 30 percent of people [ CITATION Sha18 \l 1033 ] who try heroin get addicted, while one study showed that when someone explained addiction to overweight or obese subjects, 29 percent of them [ CITATION Meu11 \l 1033 ] said they had an addiction to food. Today, more than 70 percent of American adults [ CITATION CDC16 \l 1033 ] are either overweight or obese, and this number is rising. This suggests that the United States has, at the very least, an unhealthy food dependency. There’s no such thing as food abstinence. You’re not able to say that you’ve never tried it. You eat because you need it for fuel, and you’ll die if you don’t eat. This puts you in a balancing act. Eat a little, but don’t eat too much. Go overboard and gorge today and cut back tomorrow. Eat healthy food and avoid junk food. Sometimes, you’re successful. Other times, you fail miserably. There’s no such thing as food abstinence. You’re not able to say that you’ve never tried it. You eat because you need it for fuel, and you’ll die if you don’t eat. This puts you in a balancing act. “I have never ever met a person who chose to be an addict, nor have I ever met someone who chose to be obese,” said Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “Imagine what it must be like to be unable to stop doing something when you want to.” Several parts of your brain have a hand in processing the pleasure sensation. The striatum is the spot in your brain where pleasurable feelings can turn into unwanted outcomes. This spot has a host of D2 receptors, and these receptors bind with dopamine. This neurotransmitter drives your body’s reward system. As long as the striatum and your dopamine system stay balanced, your ability to control pleasure to food like eating one slice of cake or having a single glass of wine will, too. If you have too few D2 receptors or too low levels of dopamine, it impacts your behavior. We find ourselves giving in to impulse. We eat what we want whenever it strikes our fancy, and we have very little regard for the consequences. One study [ CITATION Tri14 \l 1033 ]looked at PET scans of heroin addicts and healthy subjects’ brains. They found a reduced striatal function was detected when they were addicted to heroin. The researchers also pointed out other studies that showed people addicted to other behavior or substances had similar defects. For addiction, several areas of the brain process pleasure. However, the inability to resist the addiction’s temptation comes from the striatum. For food addictions, dopamine isn’t the only chemical in your brain involved. A hormone called leptin is also implicated, and fat cells release this hormone to give you the feeling of satiety. When you feel hungry, your leptin levels drop. When you’re full, it’s leptin that signals you to stop eating. For people who find themselves compulsively eating, the brain doesn’t react correctly to leptin, or there isn’t enough released. The foods themselves also play a role. You’ve heard of America’s sugar addiction, but it’s far more complex. While we might see doughnuts or candy irresistible, the same thing isn’t true if you walked into a room and saw a plain bowl of sugar on the table. Instead, you crave sweets that come loaded with salt, fat, and sugar. Craving salt, fat, and sugar isn’t just a human problem either. One study [ CITATION Sch13 \l 1033 ] showed that when rats were presented with Oreos, their pleasure centers lit up even more powerfully than they did when presented with cocaine. These findings suggest that drugs, as well as high sugar/high fat foods, can trigger addictive processes in your brain. While there is joy in food, it’s a joy you have to have in moderation. Much like the pleasure people get from drugs, it’s easy for it to spin out of control. People who eat compulsively can have just as much of a battle in front of them as someone who has a drug addiction does, and they need just as much support as they work to beat it. Bibliography CDC. (2015 - 2016). Obesity and Overweight. Retrieved from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm Meule, A. (2011, Nov 3). How Prevalent is "Food Addiction?". Retrieved from Pubmed: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC-/ Schroeder, J. (2013, October 18). Oreo cookies as addictive as cocaine - to lab rats. Retrieved from Medical News Today: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/267543.php#1 Sharman, N. (2018, May 31). One-Third of New Heroin Users Become Dependent on It. Retrieved from Live Science: https://www.livescience.com/62701-odds-of-heroin-dependency.html Trifilieff, P. Martinez, D. (2014, Jan). Imaging addiction: D2 receptors and dopamine signaling in the striatum as biomarkers for impulsivity. 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