"Are Fatty Foods Addictive?"
The food industry, like the tobacco companies
and other drug lords,
have been able to come up with products
that tap into that same dopamine reward system.
Why a picture of a cheese burger
rather than sugary soda pop?
Well now we know fat may have similar effects
on the brain as well.
You feed some people some yogurt
packed with butter fat,
and within 30 minutes you can start to see
the same changes in brain activity
you get when you drink sugar water.
People who regularly eat ice cream
—sugar and fat—
have a deadened dopamine response
in their brains to drinking a milkshake.
It's like when drug abusers have to use
more and more to get the same high.
Frequent ice cream consumption is related to a reduction
in reward-region responsivity in humans—
they're talking about the pleasure center in the brain,
paralleling the tolerance observed in drug addiction.
Once we've so dulled our dopamine response,
we may subsequently overeat in an effort to achieve
the degree of satisfaction experienced previously,
which contributes to unhealthy weight gain.
What do fatty/sugary foods have in common?
They are energy- dense foods.
It may be less the number of calories than their concentration.
Consumption of a calorie dense diet
compared to the same number of calories
in a calorie dilute diet
leads to that numbing of the dopamine response.
It's like the difference between cocaine and crack.
Same stuff chemically,
but by smoking crack cocaine we can deliver
a higher dose quicker to our brain.
As an aside, I found it interesting
that the control drink in these milkshake studies
wasn't just water.
They can't use water because
our brain can actually taste water on the tongue—
I didn't know that!
So they had to use artificial saliva,
they made people drink a solution
designed to mimic the natural taste of saliva—ew!
Anyway, with this new understanding
of the neural correlates of food addiction,
there've been calls to include obesity
as an official mental disorder.
After all, both obesity and addiction share
the inability to restrain behavior in spite of
an awareness of detrimental health consequences.
That's one of the defining criteria of substance abuse.
You keep putting crap in your body despite the knowledge
that you have a problem that is likely caused by the crap,
yet you can't stop.
Redefining obesity as an addiction,
as a psychiatric disease,
would be a boon to drug companies
that are already working on a whole bunch of drugs
to muck with our brain chemistry.
For example, you give people an opiate blocker
like they do for people with heroine overdoses
to block the effects of the drug,
and people eat significantly less cheese.
It just doesn't do as much for them any more,
when their opiate receptors are blocked.
Rather than taking drugs, though,
we can prevent the deadening of our pleasure center
in the first place by sticking to foods
that are naturally calorically dilute,
like whole plant foods.
This can help bring back our dopamine sensitivity
such that we can again derive the same pleasure
from the simplest of foods.
And this is not just for people who are obese.
Yes, when we regularly eat calorie dense animal
and junk foods like ice cream
we can blunt our pleasure center
overeat to compensate,
but when our brain down-regulates dopamine receptors
to deal with all these jolts of fat and sugar
we may experience less enjoyment
from other activities as well.
That's why cocaine addicts may have an impaired
neurological capacity to enjoy sex,
why smokers also have an impaired ability
to respond to positive stimuli.
Since these all involve the same dopamine pathways
what we put into our body, what we eat
can affect how we experience all of life's pleasures.
So to live life to the fullest, what's the solution?
Well, the food industry, according to some addiction specialists,
should be given incentives to develop low calorie foods
that are more attractive, palatable, and affordable
so that people can adhere to diet programs
for a long time.
No need!
Mother nature, beat them all to it.