Can You Be Addicted to Food?

It was a Tuesday afternoon, and I got the phone call from a close mate. His car was getting repossessed if he didn’t have the money for a repayment in his account by that afternoon. Having started a new job, he was to be paid Thursday.

This guy was a good guy. Very successful. The car was an Audi, and I knew how proud a person he was — so I transferred the money in good faith, on the understanding that once his pay hit, as late as Thursday evening, he would repay the funds.

That was over a decade ago, and we have still never been paid back.

That close mate I thought so highly of was a gambling addict. Unfortunately, I didn’t know. He had persuaded money out of our entire social circle in secret. None of us see or hear from him anymore. While he put me in a terrible position and I felt like I really let Amy down, we learnt a valuable lesson — and now, reflecting, I feel sorry for him.

So can we be addicted to food?

We can define addiction as the inability to moderate behaviour despite its negative consequences. Gambling, alcohol, drugs — we have all had a story similar to the one above at the hands of these behaviours and substances.

But can we be addicted to food? Can those things that make food so palatable make us addicted? Addiction neuroscientist Dr Robyn Brown says yes. I’ll look into sugar below, but the science suggests salt and fat have similar impacts on our physiology.

What sugar does to the brain

When we eat sugar, it activates the pleasure centre of our brain. Compared to cocaine in experiments with rats, sugar showed up as 50 times less potent — but acting on the same part of the brain. It revealed that exposure to sugar in excess was enough to change the structure of the neurones in the brain.

When we eat sugar, we release a chemical in our brain known as dopamine. This encourages us to keep going, ensuring survival — a handy fact thousands of years ago, when sugar was a rare treat.

Fast forward all those years and we are surrounded by the stuff. The irony of what was once a lifeline is that it has now become a fast-tracked way to decrease our quality of life. In a cruel twist, the feedback loop of dopamine release, sugar consumption and your level of satisfaction requires increasing amounts to maintain the same level of satisfaction.

In short: we eat more to get the same effect that two squares of Dairy Milk used to give us.

Empathy has to be the mandate

The doctor presenting the lecture was explicit: greater empathy and respect for those suffering this needs to be our mandate.

Remember, it isn’t the single exposure that causes this addiction — it’s the excessive intake, regularly, that reinforces the behaviour. Emotional eating or boredom may be the initial drivers, but then it becomes any cue of stress, fatigue or conflict, and that neural highway to survival is lit up like a Christmas tree.

Can you name a human who gets through life with no stress, fatigue or conflict?

Why food is the hardest one to walk away from

When someone is addicted to a drug, they aren’t placed back into an environment where the drug in question is available at every corner shop, pantry and fridge. Or advertised on social media, TV and the radio. And don’t forget — everyone around you is also drinking and eating it as well.

Any “detox” is usually self-imposed, and with our current schedules, willpower is exchanged for productivity — convenience foods and ease of access paving the way for MORE.

The motivated individual in this story, having failed, given up and succumbed, feels terrible. Shame, guilt and embarrassment are all served up as a chaser to that can of Red Bull and Cherry Ripe for $5 at the servo. These feelings fuel more intake with reckless abandon, and feelings of hopelessness prompt more eating, further reinforcing the structure of those brain cells. Coupled with that is the support crew’s negative judgement and frustration at yet another relapse — from people who are often eating the stuff anyway.

Nourish proactively, and the grip loosens

Understanding that the craving for more is real is the first step in understanding the role these highly palatable foods are playing in your daily intake. It’s also why humans in our current environment respond so well to a regular intake of food.

If the hunger hormone ghrelin is signalling EAT EAT EAT because we’ve eaten nothing all day and it’s 3pm, the likelihood of overeating something sweet is high. That excessive intake changes the structure of the brain and further fuels the “addiction”.

However, if we proactively nourish ourselves with normal, everyday food:

• Cereal for breakfast
• Sandwiches for lunch
• Meat and 3 veg for dinner

…we will see the “addiction” cycle reduce its grip. We are no longer eating in the grip of ghrelin shouting EAT EAT EAT.

There are two other parts to this argument. The first is tools for dealing with stress, conflict and fatigue — I’ll talk to that in a future post. The second is the good, the bad and the ugly of carbs. I’ll dive deeper on that one too, but for now: while chocolate, ice cream and lollies can technically be classed as carbs, they are simple, refined carbohydrates. These flood our bodies and brains with glucose fast.

That’s very different to whole grains and cereals, eaten and digested with fibre, which slowly release glucose into the bloodstream. We don’t get the dopamine rush from such an intake — but we have ensured survival through regular consumption, and if we just give ourselves some time, we then release leptin, the satiety hormone, allowing us to remain satisfied. This is a completely different way of eating to reacting to stress, boredom, or an argument with a colleague.

Four questions to ask yourself

Here are a few questions to ask before the next chocolate or cheese platter:

• Is this nourishing, or escaping?
• Am I hungry, or am I craving?
• Am I heading toward my goal or away from it with the next mouthful?
• Would I serve this amount of food to someone I had over for dinner?

Yours in Health,
Sean Cornish