“[T]he theory that the brain responds to high-fat, high-calorie foods similarly to how it responds to drugs is now gaining scientific muscle, led by renowned names in the field of addiction,” reports The Daily Beast’s Laura Beil in an October 28, 2012, article describing so-called food addiction as “one of the hottest topics in obesity research.” In particular, Beil recounts the work undertaken by former tobacco researchers such as Mark Gold, who now chairs the University of Florida’s Department of Psychiatry, as well as animal studies that examine how brain chemicals respond to “highly palatable” foods. The article also explains human brain scans that have led scientists to focus attention on dopamine receptors, which “can reveal a great deal about the dynamics of pleasure, reward motivation, and addiction,” and hormones such as ghrelin that help regulate the desire to eat. Although Beil notes that experts have cited data inconsistencies in…
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School districts in California, New Mexico and Illinois have reportedly publicized their intention to ban “Flamin’ Hot” Cheetos® snacks from campus vending machines and lunches over concerns about the product’s nutritional content. According to media reports, the schools in question have described the snack item as “hyperpalatable” with each bag containing 26 grams of fat and one-quarter of the recommended daily amount of sodium. As University of Michigan clinical psychologist Ashley Gearhardt further explained, “Our brain is really hardwired to find things like fat and salt really rewarding, and now we have foods that have them in such high levels that it can trigger an addictive process.” “It’s something that has been engineered so that it is fattier and saltier and more novel to the point where our body, brain and pleasure centers react to it more strongly than if we were eating, say, a handful of nuts,” Gearhardt said. “Going…
A recent study examining the shared neurobiological substrates of obesity and addiction has concluded that “there are several identifiable circuits in the brain, whose dysfunctions uncover real and clinically meaningful parallels between the two disorders.” N.H. Volkow, et al., “Obesity and addiction: neurobiological overlaps,” Obesity Reviews, September 2012. According to the study’s authors, “Drugs of abuse tap into the neuronal mechanisms that modulate the motivation to consume food, thus, it is not surprising that there is an overlap in the neuronal mechanisms implicated in the loss of control and overconsumption of food intake seen in obesity and in the compulsive intake of drugs seen in addiction.” In particular, the study considers brain dopamine (DA) pathways and their role in both obesity and addiction, cautioning that the current debate over “food addiction” often oversimplifies behavioral patterns involving environmental and biological factors. As a result, the authors seek to sidestep the debate by…
A recent animal study has reportedly identified a new mechanism by which the brain increases the desire to overconsume sweet and fatty treats like chocolate. Alexandra DiFeliceantonio, et al., “Enkephalin Surges in Dosal Neostriatum as a Signal to Eat,” Current Biology, October 2012. Relying on advanced opioid microdialysis techniques to detect extracellular levels of a neurotransmitter called enkephalin, University of Michigan researchers injected a drug into the neostriatum of rats to stimulate the mu opioid receptors before the animals were permitted to eat M&M candies. The results evidently showed that mu opioid stimulation “potently enhanced consumption of palatable M&M chocolates,” with injected rats “more than doubling total M&M intake.” In addition, the authors’ microdialysis study of the same brain region, which has primarily been linked to movement, purportedly revealed that naturally occurring enkephalin levels “rose to 150% of baseline when the rats were suddenly allowed to eat chocolates.” According to…
“Are you a food addict?,” asks a September 20, 2012, New York Times “Well” blog post featuring a “food addiction” quiz . Citing several food studies allegedly suggesting “that food and drug addiction have much in common, particularly in the way that both disrupt the parts of the brain involved in pleasure and self-control,” columnist Tara Parker-Pope offers a shortened version of the Yale Food Addiction Scale created by researchers at Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. The quiz asks readers to respond to such questions such as, “I find myself consuming certain foods even though I am no longer hungry” and “I keep consuming the same types or amounts of food despite significant emotional and/or physical problems related to my eating.” Based on the inputted responses, the applet then provides a food addiction score ranging from “not addicted” to “possible food addiction” indicating that “you may…
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reportedly approved the use by Ohio State University (OSU) investigators of brain pacemakers as an obesity treatment. Deep-brain stimulation has apparently been approved for use in the treatment of disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, tremor, dystonia, and severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, and OSU researchers and clinicians evidently made the case for use of the therapy to treat obesity in an article recently published in Neurosurgery. According to OSU Professor of Neurological Surgery Ali Rezai, the goal will be to stimulate the region of the brain linked to addictive behavior to improve its function, regulation and control. “Research shows that many of the complexities of obesity are traced to faulty signals in the brain. Considering the heightened health risks in obese individuals and the problems that some patients have after bariatric surgery, it is reasonable to consider deep-brain stimulation as a treatment,” he said. See…
Yale University Psychology Professor Kelly Brownell has published a collection of essays with co-editor Mark Gold, Food and Addiction: A Comprehensive Handbook, that, according to Amazon.com “brings scientific order to the issue of food and addiction, spanning multiple disciplines to create the foundation for what is a rapidly advancing field and to highlight needed advances in science and public policy. The book assembles leading scientists and policy makers from fields such as nutrition, addiction, psychology, epidemiology, and public health to explore and analyze the scientific evidence for the addictive properties of food.” New York University Nutrition Professor Marion Nestle calls the work “an instant classic.” She notes that the edited pieces included in the book range from “the seriously scientific to the thoroughly anecdotal.” Asking whether food is “addictive in ways similar to alcohol or cocaine,” Nestle states, “In some ways yes, maybe, and no. Read it and decide for…
Researchers with the University of Michigan and Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity have authored commentary in Biological Psychiatry about the policy implications of an addiction model for food. Ashley Gearhardt & Kelly Brownell, “Can Food and Addiction Change the Game?,” Biological Psychiatry, August 2012. Gearhardt and Brownell argue that scientific efforts to establish whether certain foods or ingredients “have addictive potential” “will be more important to policy and social change than emphasizing the individual difference variables or investigating how obese and nonobese individuals differ.” In particular, they claim that such research will need to emphasize the effects of potentially addictive foods “on the many rather than just the few” to maximize the impact on public policy. “Scientific enquiries into how addictive substances are capable of hijacking the brain has reduced stigmatization of addicted individuals and led to more substance-focused policy approaches (e.g., taxation of cigarettes, restrictions…
Suggesting that soft drinks are associated with “addictive mechanisms,” a coalition of nearly 100 federal, state and local public health organizations and individuals have added their voices to the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network’s, urging the U.S. Surgeon General to “prepare a Report on the health effects of sugary drinks and to issue a Call to Action so spur national efforts to reduce sugary drink consumption.” Further details on the Network’s letter to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius appear in Issue 446 of this Update. Citing risks to young people’s health and national security interests, the latest correspondence claims that sugary drinks “have become a routine, daily beverage for tens of millions of Americans” and they are “aggressively marketed, especially to young consumers and minorities, in both traditional and digital media, and in event sponsorships.” The July 19, 2012, letter suggests that a Surgeon…
The journal PLoS Medicine has published two articles and an editorial in a “major new series” on “Big Food” in this week’s issue, and will publish five additional related articles over the next two weeks. The editorial notes that the articles, focusing on “the role in health of Big Food, which we define as the multinational food and beverage industry with huge and concentrated market power,” were selected under the guidance of guest editors Marion Nestle of New York University and David Stuckler of Cambridge University. Contending that Big Food has “an undeniably influential presence on the global health stage,” the editorial introduces the other articles and observes, “We decided not to provide a forum for the industry to offer a perspective on their role in global health, since this point of view has been covered many times before and fails to acknowledge their role in subverting the public health agenda,…
