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Do you have a food addiction?

July 10, 2007 on 11:31 am

Yale University is convening a conference of nearly 40 experts on nutrition, obesity, and addiction tonight to discuss the “controversial topic” of food addiction.

Among the topics of discussion for the meeting: MRI research and other work that shows strong similarities in ways drugs and certain foods affect the brain; the relationship between eating and reward systems in the brain; psychological similarities between food cravings and cravings for drugs, and the implications of this work for government policy, clinical intervention, and the law.

Well, it’s about time. I believe I may have a serious food addiction myself. After all, an addiction is defined as a recurring compulsion by an individual to engage in some specific activity. I eat all the time. Even three or four times, some days.

Professor Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale, one of the leading food nannies in the nation, says that “Everything changes if food is found to have addictive properties, especially the legal and legislative landscape around marketing foods to children.”

Warning: Withdrawal from a food addiction can produce some harmful side effects – starvation and death, for instance.

2 Comments »

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  1. I recently spent some time on a forum at a site devoted to weight loss (it worked, I lost 20 lbs in about 4 months). There were several people there who posted about their food addiction (as opposed to those of us who just LOVE food), and it’s much MUCH more than “needing to eat several times a day or you’ll die.”

    See, when you get full, you stop. I bet you rarely go to 6 or 7 different fast food places in one afternoon. I bet that eating a particular kind of food doesn’t always trigger a huge binge on it for you, and eating a particular food is probably not the only way you can deal with your problems.

    It’s not an addiction to food in general. It’s an addiction to unhealthy and abnormal amounts of specific kinds of food, and it may have a phsysiological basis. Of course, it may not, too. But to dismiss the whole idea on the grounds that we need food to live is just ignorant.

    Comment by karen — July 11, 2007 #

  2. Whilst the satire you’ve employed here is undoubtedly humourous for those people who are not addicted to food you seem to have missed the point of the conference. There are people in this world who are seriously addicted to food…I am one of them. When I’m full I simply cannot stop eating. This isn’t greed or ignorance…this is the way I deal with my problems and it’s deep seated from a very young age.

    The science of this is that bad foods release certain toxins into your body that leave you feeling elated, a bit like certain illegal drugs. The body craves this feeling time and time again.

    I’m glad you haven’t experience the problem of overeating but please don’t dismiss something so readily that you have little or no understanding of.

    Comment by jolenemartin — August 1, 2007 #

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