Psychiatry Professor Calls for Anti-Tobacco Initiatives to Address Obesity Epidemic

In a University of Oxford Press (UOP) blog post titled “From cigarettes to
obesity, public health at risk,” University of Florida Psychiatry Professor Mark
Gold advances his food addiction hypothesis and suggests, “If overeating is
due to food acquiring drug-like or tobacco-like brain reinforcement properties,
then the current globesity and overeating-related health crisis might have
lessons to learn from tobacco.” Gold recently co-edited a book of essays, Food
and Addiction, and claims that taxes on soft drinks, like taxes on cigarettes,
could reduce consumption.

According to Gold, animal tests show “that sucrose and fructose corn syrup
are self-administered as if they were drugs and that an opiate-like abstinence
syndrome could be produced by detoxification or antagonist administration.”
He claims that new treatments based on the addiction hypothesis
should address food preferences “and not just appetite.” He concludes, “New
approaches, evidence-based approaches, like those that have been used
successfully to develop novel public health and treatment approaches for
tobacco, alcohol, and other addictions are needed.” See UOPBlog, January 3,
2013.