Defining:

FOOD ADDICTION

In the last decade, researchers have expended significant energy trying to untangle the mystery of food addiction. Food addiction is somewhat puzzling and complex compared to other forms of substance addiction, and thus, treatment is problematic.

All humans need and consume food. We are hard-wired to seek out calorie-dense foods like fats and carbohydrates. We require them to live. Why do some people have greater difficulty consuming food in moderate amounts? Why do some overeat compulsively and become obese?

Historically, obesity has been attributed to various social, moral, and genetic factors, including willpower, lack of exercise, learned behaviors, emotional disturbance and genetic predisposition. Within the past few years however, experts have begun exploring the ways in which compulsive overeaters resemble individuals who are addicted to alcohol and/or drugs.

In 2007, researchers from Pennsylvania’s Drexel University confirmed what historians have already observed: that affluence within a society, leading to an abundance of delicious food, seems to invite a fixation on eating as a pleasurable activity. The researchers described a food environment in affluent societies which helps to create an “appetitive drive” similar to other pleasure-seeking activities, such as recreational drug use and compulsive gambling.

The Drexel researchers referred to this phenomenon as “hedonic hunger.” The most important implication of this study is that psychological factors within the individual may not entirely explain the desire to overeat. Eating for pleasure, they suggest, may be part of our evolution – a trigger to eat more than we need during plentiful times to help us better survive times when food may be scarce. With the unprecedented stability of our society, however, this instinct has begun to cause problems, as evidenced by climbing rates of obesity.

Study co-author and Drexel professor of psychology said of his study’s findings:

“The combination of an environment filled with highly palatable foods, and cultural norms that make these foods ‘psychologically available’ around the clock may paradoxically be a perfect recipe for the generation of both epidemic obesity and widespread hedonic hunger.”

Food addiction can sometimes be difficult to diagnose because so many factors may contribute to disordered eating and/or obesity. However, experts agree that healthy and unhealthy behaviors with regard to food are fairly standard. A healthy relationship with food includes eating when hungry, stopping when full, eating without shame and guilt, and eating with friends and family.

An unhealthy relationship with food usually includes compulsive eating, regular overeating, secretive eating, eating when not hungry, eating to deal with emotions, as well as more extreme behaviors such as starving and binging cycles. In general, food addiction is considered to be any set of unhealthy eating behaviors (usually obsessive behaviors) that makes the eater feel out of control with regard to food and threatens the eater’s physical and/or psychological health.

Experts also agree that the key to recovering from food addiction is to end the secrecy.

Disordered eating behaviors thrive on secrecy and isolation, and it’s a vicious cycle. The more extreme a person’s eating behaviors become, the more secretive they become out of shame and guilt. The more secretive they become, the more extreme their behaviors can become.

The first step in treating food addiction is for the addict to tell someone about his struggle.

Experts recommend the following “action steps” for

those suffering from food addiction:

The only thing you have to lose, is a pound a day.

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