Wake Up World February 19 2014
Have you ever heard someone describe a certain food as addictive? Of course you have. Certainly when we eat specific foods, it feels like we can’t seem to get enough. And we also have a tendency to turn to those foods for emotional comfort.
We also understand that binge eating is considered an eating disorder – it is categorized as a mental-emotional disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). However, the bigger question is whether binge eating is addictive? And is food addiction contributing to the obesity epidemic?
Food addiction is real
According to Dr. S. Dickson, it is important to understand the mechanisms underlying the uncontrolled intake of food and the development of obesity. She remarked that “brain reward pathways that are involved in alcohol and drug addiction are also essential elements of the ghrelin responsive circuit. And ghrelin has been shown to both signal hunger and increase food intake”.
Ghrelin is a hormone secreted by the stomach and pancreas which stimulates areas of the brain responsible for hunger – and it might be responsible for food addiction, making some people more prone to obesity.
Dr. Dickson also added, “based on these and other recent findings, could obesity be a food addiction? A subgroup of obese patients indeed show ‘addictive-like’ properties with regard to overeating…. but this does not automatically mean they are addicted”.
“We don’t completely understand why certain vulnerable individuals become addicted, transferring something rewarding to becoming addicted to it,” she noted. “For now, we need to ask: in our modern environment where food is so plentiful, has food no longer become our friend when it is something we can become addicted to?”