When people use heroin, their brains become
physiologically dependent on the drug and the behavioral patterns of use become
written alongside this need.

That’s addiction: both behaviorally and
biologically, heroin addicts need the drug. When they don’t get it, they crave
it, even though they may no longer like it
and know the drug is bad for them. If the drug is withheld long enough, the
addict experiences symptoms of withdrawal.

Now, an
important review of food addiction in the Journal of Nutrition points out many
parallels between heroin and food. First, drugs and food make us feel good in
the same ways – we tend to think about drug addiction first and then wonder how
food addiction might be like it, but, really, drugs take over reward pathways
in the brain that were originally built for food.

The high you get from a drug takes
over a system in your brain that, way back in evolutionary time, made you leave
your cave to look for vittles. And cravings for drugs are extreme versions of
the feelings of hunger and satisfaction that come from eating.

Here’s a little more about how it works: As
you probably know, drugs like cocaine create dopamine release in the brain –
the longer you use the drug, the less sensitive your brain is to it, and so the
more cocaine you need to create dopamine release. The same dopamine
desensitization is true in obese people – food creates dopamine release in the
brain, but people who chronically overeat require
more and more food to create the same “good
feeling” of dopamine release.

There’s another critical point in the
definition of drug addiction: addicts continue to crave the substance long
after they report liking it. With food, most of the foods “addicted” people
crave are also foods they like...and continue to like. People who consider
themselves food addicts are more likely to crave cake than cucumbers. But there
are some exceptions: a study that put people on a bland,
vanilla food replacement shake found that in the week after the study ended,
some people reported craving the shake even though they also said they didn’t like it – making people accustomed to
the “drug” and then taking it away produced cravings even when, like heroin for
most long-term addicts, they no longer liked the drug.

So, according to the Journal of Nutrition review, here’s what we know: “Two of the criteria mentioned in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders are tolerance and
withdrawal and there is evidence for food withdrawal and tolerance.”

Another important criteria for addiction is
consequences; part of the definition of drug or alcohol addiction is the
negative consequences of this addiction. What are the negative consequences of
food? The review points out a critical distinction: for healthy, normal-weight
people, the consequences of food are generally positive; for obese people or
people who control weight through unhealthy means like bulimia, the
consequences of food can be negative, up to and including early death, just as
with drug addiction.

“Just as some individuals can drink alcohol
responsibly and others cannot, there are individual differences in reactions to
food (due to genetic predisposition or to prior experience) and some people can
consume food in moderation more easily than others,” the review writes.

In
other words, food may be just like alcohol; for people who are addicted, the
substances are “addictive”; for people who are not addicted, because the
substances don’t really do harm, they are not “addictive”.

So you want to know if food is addictive?
Here’s what the review says: “overweight or obese individuals probably do meet the clinical criterion
for food addiction, [for example] persistent desire or repeated unsuccessful
attempts to quit; important social, occupational, or recreational activities
given up or reduced; continued use despite knowledge of adverse consequences.”

If you crave food
even past liking it, become
desensitized to consumption so that you need more and more to get the same good
feeling, and are past a tipping point at which eating has the potential to do
real harm, you very well may be addicted to food.

***

Richard Taite is founder and CEO of Cliffside
Malibu, offering evidence-based,
individualized addiction treatment based on the Stages of Change model. He is
also co-author with Constance
Scharff of the book Ending
Addiction for Good.