Food Addiction

[ysabetwordsmith]

I was intrigued by this article suggesting that fatty foods can create brain changes in rats, similar to those caused by drug addiction.  I wonder if extremely sweet or excessively modified foods could do that too.  Also, I think it would be interesting to study whether some individuals are resistant to food addiction, as is the case with most addictions -- and look for factors that clue one way or the other.  However, this really just fits a general trend, that too much of any one thing in any part of life tends to have bad effects.

Comments

[lavenderfae9.livejournal.com]

The article is pretty vague about which "fatty foods" were used in the study. It's misleading, because the body and brain need good fats.

[earthwomyn06.livejournal.com]

I'm a firm believer that a person can be addicted to sugar.. I'm living proof of that..
Fat I'm not sure.. need more info

[ditenebre.livejournal.com]

You may be interested in the writings of Neal Barnard, MD, and David A. Kessler, MD.

Neal Barnard is the President of the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine. Dr. Barnard has two articles in the PCRM's Good Health e-magazine on food addiction: Food Addiction: Hi, I'm John, and I'm a Cholesterolic and Breaking the Food Seduction. A description of Dr. Barnard's book by the same name can be found here.

David Kessler was the Commissioner of the FDA under Bush v 1.0 and Clinton, as well as past Dean of the medical schools at Yale and UCSF. In his book, The End of Overeating (as described here in a related blog), Dr. Kessler examines the fat/sugar/salt relationship to our desire to eat.

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

I'm currently following the Ideal Protein diet under the watchful eye of my chiropractor, who also has a degree in nutrition.

One of the current things that's being said is the 2 most common causes of overeating are a shortage of vitamin D, and dehydration. A shortage of vitamin D apparently causes one to feel hungry. I'm not a scientist, and I don't know how true that is, but as part of my diet I've stopped drinking diet coke (which contributes to dehydration), I'm taking a lot of nutritional supplements including a daily vitamin D, and I'm drinking at least 4 500 ml bottled waters per day in addition to the water used in my protein packets.

I was down 14 pounds on my 13th day weigh-in last Thursday and, to quote Jonathan Coulton, I feel fantastic!