Blog

2

Paying attention to the food reward debates as well as some personal experience with addiction and over eating I’m beginning to think food addiction is everywhere! I recently went on a road trip with some friends. We had to stop every 4 hours to eat at some restaurant.. It sucked and wasted so much time. As we all know, a lot of people will go at lengths to defend their eating habits. How many SAD eaters do you think are food addicts? Or somewhere on the addiction spectrum?

flag

5 Answers

3

I think I'm still a food addict even though I'm not consuming nearly as much. I'm always reading about Paleo, sourcing foods, etc. I transferred the addiction.

link|flag
3 
 Yup! That's me; I spend about an hour per day obsessively reading/commenting on my food lifestyle. I have to say that beats killing myself with food as I was on SAD. – Nance Oct 2 2011 at 1:57
Yep I agree. At least it's healthy. – vdh1979 Oct 2 2011 at 14:34
i find education a healthy addiction. – Rebekah Mar 23 2012 at 23:10
3

Many people like to criticize SAD, but recently I was thinking about something. Here in Europe, people are on something similar to SAD - with the exception that maybe instead of cornflakes, we like to eat bread with butter for breakfast. Plus, most parents doesn't allow their kids to drink soft-drinks. But still, not that many people are obese or addicted to food.

My theory is, that although SAD is certainly not optimal diet, it is not that bad actually. But what is terrible, is that in U.S., people like to over-sweeten everything. I was in N.Y.C. for 10 days, and it was quite apparent - coke was sweeter than in Slovakia, normal bread was sweet (instead of salty), cakes were so sweet that I barely could eat it...(and I liked cakes a lot back then). What got me puzzled most was that in the morning, we ate rich breakfast consisting of scrambled eggs, bacon and potatoes - nice salty food, but then I saw some people liked to pour some black sweet syrup into it... something we Europeans would not do.

So I think the main problem is not SAD, but artificial over-sweetening, and that could very well cause addiction as well.

link|flag
I like eating the Standard French Diet, which is carbier than the SAD, loaded with sugar and gluten, not to mention the wine and cigarettes. Not paleo, but with French healthcare, more walking and less volumetric eating, there's an offset against dietary changes. I was in Slovakia once a few years ago and was sad to see the intrusion of Tesco. As far as sweets go, a good poppyseed cake is pretty deadly [are poppyseeds paleo?] even compared to American coke, and there is a certain amount of trencherman eating of starchy dishes and beer, but it wasn't the US style constant sedentary pigout. – thhq Oct 2 2011 at 15:41
It's a question of degree, after all you go on to spend most of your answer pointing out other ways in which the typical european diet is different to SAD. There's other protective factors such as the predominantly pastured livestock but the trends are not going in the right direction. There are similarly developing issues of obesity. – PrimalDanny Feb 13 2012 at 13:16
1

I think that many people have issues with overeating SAD foods for potentially a number of reasons. But I suspect that the number of actual "addicts" is actually fairly small ... if you define addiction as one that involves clear lack of control in spite of the problems caused by consuming the substance (this source claims that 75% of adults drink, and 6% of those become alcoholics).

There's probably a much larger percent of people though who use food as a coping mechanism when stressed. But I wouldn't label that addiction.

link|flag
High bluffing carbs make your hunger return inappropriatly soon. I'd call that addictive. – Huey Sep 18 2011 at 0:22
My auto spell turn glycemic into bluffing! Cool! – Huey Sep 18 2011 at 0:23
2 
 Sorry, I disagree. If there is something addictive about foods (and I suspect there is), it's not likely to be related to high GI foods and hunger. Instead, it's probably related substances within foods -- such as opioid peptides found in wheat and dairy that ping endorphin receptors in the brain, or veggie oils whose omega 6s ping the endocannabinoid system for those with metabolic syndrome -- which may lead to real addiction behavior (tolerance, dependance, withdrawal etc). – Beth-WeightMaven Sep 18 2011 at 2:10
+1 for the autospell – The Loon Sep 18 2011 at 3:01
Well, people who aren't trying to lose weight or leave SAD may be addicts and don't know it. I think the grim stats on diet failures infers there are a significant number of addicts. – Nance Oct 2 2011 at 1:58
1

Food addiction is now becoming a very common health issue. Many people are addicted to food and some of them are addicted to fast food which have fats and carbs. My friend is also addicted to food and his weight is 120 Kg. But now he started taking some medicines as per the doctors instruction to cure the food addiction.

link|flag
I wish your friend well. If there was a pill that actually worked, half of all Americans would be on it. Those who overcome food addiction must each find their own solutions. There are some here, including me, who've had success so I hope your friend finds his way to make food less important. – Nance Feb 13 2012 at 16:04
Hi ved12, do you happen to have any good citations from nutritional journals etc. on food addiction? I'm not convinced (yet) food is really addictive. From my own guessing, I would assume that if food is addictive, then rather specifically certain types of food are addictive and there is a well thought-out endocrinological explanation or theory around a related brain metabolism of whatever chemicals (or by-products) come from the food. – giraffefro Feb 24 2012 at 15:31
0

A very large number. There are exceptions though...

link|flag

Your Answer

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.