FEEL-GOOD FOOD MAY BE ADDICTIVE

     For some people, getting hooked on super-tasty food seems to cause addiction just like alcohol or smoking and harms the body.  Sugary soda and ice cream, salty French fries and pizza might be partly responsible for their cravings, binge-eating and weight gain.  High levels of sugar, fat, and salt and other food additives can hijack the pathways of the brain in ways that are similar to opiates and other drugs.

     Evidence suggests that sugar, in particular stimulates greater release of chemicals in the brain, including dopamine, the “pleasure molecule” than those triggered by fruit and vegetables.  Over time the brain’s circuitry may become rewired to produce less dopamine in response to high-calorie flavour-enhanced food.  Some people may eat more, attempting to stimulate dopamine with high-calorie foods.  Genetics and environmental factors like consumption of alcohol, nicotine, or narcotics.  “Conceptually, it is clear that highly palatable foods can have drug-like effects in the brain, and can cause compulsive overuse and food addiction,” says Mark S Gold., M.D., chairman of the psychiatry department at the University of Florida in Gainesville and author of many studies on the topic, many done with animals.

     Research involving people has focused on brain-imaging studies, according to a recent review, coauthored by Nora D.Volkow, M.D., director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.  A 2001 article in which Volkow analyzed dopamine levels in brain scans of obese adults helped to advance the theory that people can be addicted to food.  A recent article, published on-line in October 2011, in Current-topics on Behavioral Neurosciences updates the state of the research.  A team led by the investigators at the Oregon Research Institute in Eugene noticed that MRI’s of the regions of the brain related to reward and the senses lighted up more in obese girls anticipating a chocolate milk shake than when they were actually drinking it, compared with MRI’s of leaner girls.   “There is no longer any question about food addiction” says Kelly Brownell, Ph.D., director of the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity, “the findings raise issues about marketing and selling potentially addictive foods.  The question is where there is an addictive process that gets activated by food that affects enough people in a sufficiently strong way to create a public health menace.”