Last Updated 5/20/13
Food Addictions and Their Influence on the Brain
It seems that our society has an addictive nature: there are millions of addictions in our world. They range from very mild ones, such as watching too much television, to the dangerous ones, such as alcoholism. We are a compulsive nation that is concerned with immediate gratification. One can easily fulfill this desire with the most readily available substance - food. Food abuse is a result of biological, psychological, and sociological factors. It is the loss of control due to either strict dieting or an inadequate ability to cope with stress. This loss of control causes periods of binging and starvation, which ultimately change the brain's chemistry. This chemical imbalance in the brain might be due to feelings of pain, depression, and fear. Thus food, which is easily accessible in today’s world, is used to mask those feelings. In Food Addiction: An Examination of the Diagnostic Criteria for Dependence, Ashley Gearhart explains, “While this immediate gratification provides relief, it is also a serious problem that can lead to obesity and various other health issues.” (Gearhart).
Food addiction, like any other addiction, is a willful urge to partake in an enjoyable activity, behavior, or substance, that causes physical dependence, bestows instant relief from substantial pain, and intensifies it later on (Blumenthal).When food is used as a solution to a problem, there is a temporary relief that masks the problem. This remedy is dangerous because the brain learns this behavior as a coping mechanism, and this solution creates a new problem that is connected to pleasure. When there is a connection to a pleasurable activity, specific chemicals get liberated in the brain, producing a feeling of ecstasy (Volkow). When food brings temporary comfort, there is a persuasion towards a repetition of that particular behavior from the brain. These repeated behaviors bring about sensations and activities in the brain and a self-induced neurotransmitter change. Food is enjoyable and helps the addict deal with a pain of some type (typically emotional), and helps him or her cope with the pain.
Food as a coping mechanism isn’t the only cause of food addiction, heredity also plays an important role. Research in the science of heredity has found that there is an elevation in the lifetime prevalence of eating disorders among the relatives of people with eating disorders (Thompson). The genes that have been identified in regulation of feeding and body weight regulations are serotonergic, dopaminergic, and neuropeptides. While these genes control feeding function and energy consumption during metabolism, no one particular gene was strongly associated with eating disorders (Thompson).
Not just heredity influences food addiction, but the environment as well. The environment around us also has a great influence on eating disorders; that is, an individual that is genetically predisposed to an eating disorder can be influenced by a positive or a negative environmental reinforcement. Some people can be genetically prone to body dissatisfaction - a psychiatric condition in which the affected person suffers from a flawed perception that views some part of the body or physical feature to be defective or unsightly. A person with body dissatisfaction might be in an environment that tends to evoke strict appearance norms. If those norms are positive and reassure the individual, the eating disorder might not develop. However, if the environment places great concern on appearance and a certain standard to which the individual does not live up, an eating disorder could develop.
Heredity and environment are factors in food addiction, and so is an individual’s culture. Individuals that are genetically vulnerable to food addictions are more susceptible to cultural pressures and turn to food for comfort. In her book, Why You Binge Eat and How to Stop, Cynthia Bulik talks about how “this psychological reliance on substance induces behaviors that are similar to alcohol addiction.” (Bulik).It is a physical, emotional, and mental craving with characteristics that include: being obsessed and preoccupied with food; having a lack of self-control when it comes to food; having a compulsion about food in which eating results in a cycle of binging despite negative consequences; remembering a sense of pleasure and comfort with food and being unable to stop using food to create a sense of pleasure and comfort; and having a need to eat that results in a physical craving (Bulik). This physical craving and a need to eat is a part of an addiction rather than a bad habit. It is independent of the pleasure a drug or activity brings you and your involvement with it. You are not addicted if you can stop it when the consequences become negative for you (Zhang). Yet the brain will not go into remission without a fight. While there might not be clinical evidence of withdrawal symptoms, there will be prominent desires, cravings, and an inability to focus when surrounded by the stimuli that previously gave you so much pleasure. This addiction forces the brain to react to repeated drug exposure by adapting its own chemistry to offset the effect of the drug.
It is the brain chemistry that results from cycles of progressive food addiction instances that result in food addiction. When a person experiences a positive, pleasurable outcome from an action or event, the release of dopamine (a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain's reward and pleasure centers) and other chemicals alters the brain circuitry, providing tools and encouragement to repeat the event (Gearhart).
The brain’s reward system is organized to engage the areas of the brain that control our ability to take action. It remembers the actions used to achieve the reward and creates the capacity to repeat the experience. Thus, not only does a pleasurable experience result in pleasant memories, but also causes the executive center of the brain to provide motivation, rationalization, and the activation of other brain areas necessary to have the experience again. Therefore dopamine, a catecholamine neurotransmitter found in the brain, is responsible for the regulation of food intake through the reward system in the meso-limbic circuitry. (Wang)
The reward system has the ability to encode cues to help you repeat the experience. Sweet foods act on dopamine receptors, thus stimulating hunger and increased appetite and leading to obesity (Wang). The act of eating doesn’t just provide one with nutrients; it is also a reinforcing behavior that induces feelings of pleasure. Through eating dopamine concentrations increase in the nucleus accumbens of the brain and contributes to euphoria, which leads to overconsumption as well as abuse of food as a drug (Wang).
Another neurotransmitter that is associated with a food addiction is serotonin. Serotonin promotes relaxation, relief from anxiety, and a decrease in pain (Katherine). Individuals with reduced serotonin levels are prone to exhibit obsessive behaviors that make them more susceptible to developing a food addiction (Thompson). Sugar and carbohydrates have the ability to promote chemicals in the brain that act on the pain receptors, thus alleviating pain and reducing anxiety (Katherine). While this function might seem beneficial, it is actually harmful because it further depletes serotonin levels. The brain gets accustomed to the new stimuli, making one dependent on that sugary sweet instead of fixing the original issue. This new dependence prevents you from stopping the self-medication of food consumption. Serotonin has a feedback mechanism in the brain -- once a certain level is attained it tells you that you are satiated, thus the desire to eat is terminated (Katherine). A carbohydrate does not trigger this termination, which allows for overconsumption in individuals with malfunctioning receptors.
Heredity, environment, culture, and brain chemistry are not the only factors that influence food addiction. Palatability of food or its capacity to stimulate appetite increases its consumption. The three components of palatable food are carbohydrates, fats, and salt. An individual’s appetite is driven by tastes, and motivations to pursue those tastes. Foods that have the ability to engage all of the senses are the most palatable, and hence induce cravings and reduce the ability to terminate consumption of them.
Palatable foods create physical cravings, which interestingly are utilized by manufacturing corporations. Take for instance the popular slogan, “Once you pop you can’t stop,” which is commonly associated with potato chips. Physical cravings, like those for potato chips, develop when a person starts eating a particular food, and then wants to eat more even though they had not expected to eat more before they started eating it (Gold). Sugars, which are the building blocks of carbohydrates, can elicit those cravings. Through animal studies it was determined that when mice were exposed to sugar and then forced to abstain, the mice showed unrewarded operant conditioning. That is, they required greater amounts of sugar to be satisfied, and after being withheld, it was consumed at a greater amount (Cheren). Carbohydrates therefore not only influence mood through serotonin levels, they induce cravings by compensating for inadequate chemical levels and also produce opioids as a derivatives of excess digestion (Cheren; Katherine).
The serotonin levels of people create two distinct classes of individuals, one is carbohydrate cravers and the other is non-cravers (Campbell). Carbohydrate cravers feel distress before cravings and satisfied, happy, and relaxed after consumption. Non-cravers experience a sleepy and depressed state after consumption. Opioid production created through excess sugar metabolism acts on dopamine receptors in the brain and is similar to addictive narcotics (Cheren). Therefore the foods that contain sugars can stimulate the brain in such a way that it is easy to become addicted. Cravers are particularly susceptible to this state, but even non-cravers experience this excess opiod production when eating too much sugar and carbohydrates.
Sugars are not the only components of food that stimulate production of chemicals that act as opioids. Over consumption of fats leads to a cycle where more fats are desired by the brain. Fat acts on the opioid receptors that are stimulated by morphine, producing a feeling that is similarly obtained and sometimes referred to as a “runner’s high” (Cheren). Fats also have an impact on taste. They create flavor and odor that lead to their enjoyment (McQuillan). Lack of taste in low-fat products is considered the reason why they are not as palatable to humans. Through the heightened stimulation of the senses, foods high in fat can lead to adjustment of the senses where more intense flavors are required to satiate (McQuillan).
To enhance the effects of sugars and fats, salts are used to focus attention on the sugar and fat content of the food and stimulate the reward center of the brain. This appetite stimulant acts on the brain, yielding a reward and inducing continued food consumption, regardless of an individual’s level of food satiation (Miller). This combination of sugar, fat, and salt causes a cumulative effect on the neurons, causing them to fire more vigorously (Cheren).
In conclusion, individuals that are prone to addictions should shy away from consumption of foods that induce cravings. Through complete abstinence from sugar and flour (which is a carbohydrate found in many foods – processed and otherwise), the measuring and weighing of food using scales, and external support, one can learn to control food addiction (Sheppard). It is also important that people with food addiction remove themselves from those palatable foods that pull them towards overconsumption and induce physical craving, while dealing with the psychological issues that might be causing the addiction.
Bibliography:
Blumenthal, D. M., Gold, M.S. (2010). “Neurobiology of food addiction. Current Opinion
in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care,” 1363, 359-365.
Bulik, C. (2009). Crave: Why You Binge Eat and How to Stop. New York: Walker &
Company.
Campbell, A. (2005). Eat Carbs, Lose Weight. New York: Roale.
Cheren, M. (2009). “Physical Craving and Food Addiction.” Sarasota, FL: Philip Werdell.
Gearhart, A. (2009). “Food Addiction: An Examination of the Diagnostic Criteria
for Dependence.” Addict Med, 3(1).
Gearhart, A. (2010). “Can food be addictive? Public health and policy implications.”
Addiction, 10.
Gold, M. (2000). Eating Disorders, Overeating and Pathological Attachment to
Food: Independent or Addictive Disorder? Sarasota, FL: Gurze Books.
Katherine, A. (1996). Anatomy of a Food Addiction (3 ed.). Carlsbad, CA: Gurze Books.
McQuillan, S. (2004). Breaking the Bonds of Food Addiction. New York: Alpha Books.
Miller, N. (2010). Addictive Disorders in Medical Populations. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Sheppard, K. (2000). From the First Bite: A Complete Guide to Recovery from Food
Addiction. Dearfield Beach: Health Communications, Inc.
Thompson, K. (2004). Handbook of Eating Disorders and Obesity. Hoboken, New Jersey:
John Wiley & Sons.
Volkow, N. (2004). “The addicted human brain viewed in the light of imaging studies: brain
circuits and treatment strategies.” Neuro Pharmacology, 47, 3-13.
Wang, J. (2001). “Brain Dopamine and Obesity.” The Lancet, 357, 354 - 357.
Zhang, Y. (2011). “Food Addiction and Neuroimaging.” Current Pharmaceutical Design, 17,
1149- 1157.
Food addiction, like any other addiction, is a willful urge to partake in an enjoyable activity, behavior, or substance, that causes physical dependence, bestows instant relief from substantial pain, and intensifies it later on (Blumenthal).When food is used as a solution to a problem, there is a temporary relief that masks the problem. This remedy is dangerous because the brain learns this behavior as a coping mechanism, and this solution creates a new problem that is connected to pleasure. When there is a connection to a pleasurable activity, specific chemicals get liberated in the brain, producing a feeling of ecstasy (Volkow). When food brings temporary comfort, there is a persuasion towards a repetition of that particular behavior from the brain. These repeated behaviors bring about sensations and activities in the brain and a self-induced neurotransmitter change. Food is enjoyable and helps the addict deal with a pain of some type (typically emotional), and helps him or her cope with the pain.
Food as a coping mechanism isn’t the only cause of food addiction, heredity also plays an important role. Research in the science of heredity has found that there is an elevation in the lifetime prevalence of eating disorders among the relatives of people with eating disorders (Thompson). The genes that have been identified in regulation of feeding and body weight regulations are serotonergic, dopaminergic, and neuropeptides. While these genes control feeding function and energy consumption during metabolism, no one particular gene was strongly associated with eating disorders (Thompson).
Not just heredity influences food addiction, but the environment as well. The environment around us also has a great influence on eating disorders; that is, an individual that is genetically predisposed to an eating disorder can be influenced by a positive or a negative environmental reinforcement. Some people can be genetically prone to body dissatisfaction - a psychiatric condition in which the affected person suffers from a flawed perception that views some part of the body or physical feature to be defective or unsightly. A person with body dissatisfaction might be in an environment that tends to evoke strict appearance norms. If those norms are positive and reassure the individual, the eating disorder might not develop. However, if the environment places great concern on appearance and a certain standard to which the individual does not live up, an eating disorder could develop.
Heredity and environment are factors in food addiction, and so is an individual’s culture. Individuals that are genetically vulnerable to food addictions are more susceptible to cultural pressures and turn to food for comfort. In her book, Why You Binge Eat and How to Stop, Cynthia Bulik talks about how “this psychological reliance on substance induces behaviors that are similar to alcohol addiction.” (Bulik).It is a physical, emotional, and mental craving with characteristics that include: being obsessed and preoccupied with food; having a lack of self-control when it comes to food; having a compulsion about food in which eating results in a cycle of binging despite negative consequences; remembering a sense of pleasure and comfort with food and being unable to stop using food to create a sense of pleasure and comfort; and having a need to eat that results in a physical craving (Bulik). This physical craving and a need to eat is a part of an addiction rather than a bad habit. It is independent of the pleasure a drug or activity brings you and your involvement with it. You are not addicted if you can stop it when the consequences become negative for you (Zhang). Yet the brain will not go into remission without a fight. While there might not be clinical evidence of withdrawal symptoms, there will be prominent desires, cravings, and an inability to focus when surrounded by the stimuli that previously gave you so much pleasure. This addiction forces the brain to react to repeated drug exposure by adapting its own chemistry to offset the effect of the drug.
It is the brain chemistry that results from cycles of progressive food addiction instances that result in food addiction. When a person experiences a positive, pleasurable outcome from an action or event, the release of dopamine (a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain's reward and pleasure centers) and other chemicals alters the brain circuitry, providing tools and encouragement to repeat the event (Gearhart).
The brain’s reward system is organized to engage the areas of the brain that control our ability to take action. It remembers the actions used to achieve the reward and creates the capacity to repeat the experience. Thus, not only does a pleasurable experience result in pleasant memories, but also causes the executive center of the brain to provide motivation, rationalization, and the activation of other brain areas necessary to have the experience again. Therefore dopamine, a catecholamine neurotransmitter found in the brain, is responsible for the regulation of food intake through the reward system in the meso-limbic circuitry. (Wang)
The reward system has the ability to encode cues to help you repeat the experience. Sweet foods act on dopamine receptors, thus stimulating hunger and increased appetite and leading to obesity (Wang). The act of eating doesn’t just provide one with nutrients; it is also a reinforcing behavior that induces feelings of pleasure. Through eating dopamine concentrations increase in the nucleus accumbens of the brain and contributes to euphoria, which leads to overconsumption as well as abuse of food as a drug (Wang).
Another neurotransmitter that is associated with a food addiction is serotonin. Serotonin promotes relaxation, relief from anxiety, and a decrease in pain (Katherine). Individuals with reduced serotonin levels are prone to exhibit obsessive behaviors that make them more susceptible to developing a food addiction (Thompson). Sugar and carbohydrates have the ability to promote chemicals in the brain that act on the pain receptors, thus alleviating pain and reducing anxiety (Katherine). While this function might seem beneficial, it is actually harmful because it further depletes serotonin levels. The brain gets accustomed to the new stimuli, making one dependent on that sugary sweet instead of fixing the original issue. This new dependence prevents you from stopping the self-medication of food consumption. Serotonin has a feedback mechanism in the brain -- once a certain level is attained it tells you that you are satiated, thus the desire to eat is terminated (Katherine). A carbohydrate does not trigger this termination, which allows for overconsumption in individuals with malfunctioning receptors.
Heredity, environment, culture, and brain chemistry are not the only factors that influence food addiction. Palatability of food or its capacity to stimulate appetite increases its consumption. The three components of palatable food are carbohydrates, fats, and salt. An individual’s appetite is driven by tastes, and motivations to pursue those tastes. Foods that have the ability to engage all of the senses are the most palatable, and hence induce cravings and reduce the ability to terminate consumption of them.
Palatable foods create physical cravings, which interestingly are utilized by manufacturing corporations. Take for instance the popular slogan, “Once you pop you can’t stop,” which is commonly associated with potato chips. Physical cravings, like those for potato chips, develop when a person starts eating a particular food, and then wants to eat more even though they had not expected to eat more before they started eating it (Gold). Sugars, which are the building blocks of carbohydrates, can elicit those cravings. Through animal studies it was determined that when mice were exposed to sugar and then forced to abstain, the mice showed unrewarded operant conditioning. That is, they required greater amounts of sugar to be satisfied, and after being withheld, it was consumed at a greater amount (Cheren). Carbohydrates therefore not only influence mood through serotonin levels, they induce cravings by compensating for inadequate chemical levels and also produce opioids as a derivatives of excess digestion (Cheren; Katherine).
The serotonin levels of people create two distinct classes of individuals, one is carbohydrate cravers and the other is non-cravers (Campbell). Carbohydrate cravers feel distress before cravings and satisfied, happy, and relaxed after consumption. Non-cravers experience a sleepy and depressed state after consumption. Opioid production created through excess sugar metabolism acts on dopamine receptors in the brain and is similar to addictive narcotics (Cheren). Therefore the foods that contain sugars can stimulate the brain in such a way that it is easy to become addicted. Cravers are particularly susceptible to this state, but even non-cravers experience this excess opiod production when eating too much sugar and carbohydrates.
Sugars are not the only components of food that stimulate production of chemicals that act as opioids. Over consumption of fats leads to a cycle where more fats are desired by the brain. Fat acts on the opioid receptors that are stimulated by morphine, producing a feeling that is similarly obtained and sometimes referred to as a “runner’s high” (Cheren). Fats also have an impact on taste. They create flavor and odor that lead to their enjoyment (McQuillan). Lack of taste in low-fat products is considered the reason why they are not as palatable to humans. Through the heightened stimulation of the senses, foods high in fat can lead to adjustment of the senses where more intense flavors are required to satiate (McQuillan).
To enhance the effects of sugars and fats, salts are used to focus attention on the sugar and fat content of the food and stimulate the reward center of the brain. This appetite stimulant acts on the brain, yielding a reward and inducing continued food consumption, regardless of an individual’s level of food satiation (Miller). This combination of sugar, fat, and salt causes a cumulative effect on the neurons, causing them to fire more vigorously (Cheren).
In conclusion, individuals that are prone to addictions should shy away from consumption of foods that induce cravings. Through complete abstinence from sugar and flour (which is a carbohydrate found in many foods – processed and otherwise), the measuring and weighing of food using scales, and external support, one can learn to control food addiction (Sheppard). It is also important that people with food addiction remove themselves from those palatable foods that pull them towards overconsumption and induce physical craving, while dealing with the psychological issues that might be causing the addiction.
Bibliography:
Blumenthal, D. M., Gold, M.S. (2010). “Neurobiology of food addiction. Current Opinion
in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care,” 1363, 359-365.
Bulik, C. (2009). Crave: Why You Binge Eat and How to Stop. New York: Walker &
Company.
Campbell, A. (2005). Eat Carbs, Lose Weight. New York: Roale.
Cheren, M. (2009). “Physical Craving and Food Addiction.” Sarasota, FL: Philip Werdell.
Gearhart, A. (2009). “Food Addiction: An Examination of the Diagnostic Criteria
for Dependence.” Addict Med, 3(1).
Gearhart, A. (2010). “Can food be addictive? Public health and policy implications.”
Addiction, 10.
Gold, M. (2000). Eating Disorders, Overeating and Pathological Attachment to
Food: Independent or Addictive Disorder? Sarasota, FL: Gurze Books.
Katherine, A. (1996). Anatomy of a Food Addiction (3 ed.). Carlsbad, CA: Gurze Books.
McQuillan, S. (2004). Breaking the Bonds of Food Addiction. New York: Alpha Books.
Miller, N. (2010). Addictive Disorders in Medical Populations. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Sheppard, K. (2000). From the First Bite: A Complete Guide to Recovery from Food
Addiction. Dearfield Beach: Health Communications, Inc.
Thompson, K. (2004). Handbook of Eating Disorders and Obesity. Hoboken, New Jersey:
John Wiley & Sons.
Volkow, N. (2004). “The addicted human brain viewed in the light of imaging studies: brain
circuits and treatment strategies.” Neuro Pharmacology, 47, 3-13.
Wang, J. (2001). “Brain Dopamine and Obesity.” The Lancet, 357, 354 - 357.
Zhang, Y. (2011). “Food Addiction and Neuroimaging.” Current Pharmaceutical Design, 17,
1149- 1157.