Michelle (00:00:00) - Welcome back to the show Nourished and Free the podcast. I'm your host, Michelle Yates, a registered dietitian with my master's in Health psychology. And I love talking about all things disordered eating, having a healthy relationship with food, myth busting. Because ultimately, I think that a combination of all of these conversations is what allows us to become nourished and healthy, but ultimately free from food stress, food anxiety, and unnecessary food rules. So today I want to talk about this concept of being addicted to food. Many of the women that I work with come to me saying they feel addicted to it, and feeling addicted to sweets or to sugar. And a lot of times what I hear from these women is the difficulty of feeling this way about food, because food is always around, you know, a lot of times they're like, I almost wish it was drugs or alcohol instead, because I could just give that up completely. Obviously, it's not as easy as just giving it up, but at least you don't need it in your life every day.
Michelle (00:01:02) - You know there's that option to completely abstain from it. But we don't have that option with food, so it brings this added layer of complexity that can be very difficult. And so for a lot of the women that I work with, they come into working with me feeling like they have a food addiction. And I want to talk through this, this concept of food addiction, because it's tossed around a lot. And it's certainly we see this a lot, especially from people who are fearmongering over processed foods, ultra processed foods. And they're saying, you know, all of these companies are adding all these ingredients to their foods, that you become addicted to it and you get sicker. And then big pharma, big, big pharma profits off of you. And anyway, there's just all these conspiracies, right, about food and everything. And so anyway, I want to bring this conversation to the table because I actually think it can be somewhat freeing to know the truth behind this discussion. And this podcast is called Nourished and Free after all.
Michelle (00:02:09) - So before we get into it, I want to thank everybody who's been rating the show leaving a review. It means so much to me as I really do pour my heart and soul into this. I do a ton of research on these topics, especially these solo episodes. It's kind of insane how much time it takes me to put together all of this information, because I do want to make sure that it is the most evidence based, well put together discussion that it can be. And even then, I mean, I have my flaws, right? There's things that I wish I would say differently all the time, but regardless, when you leave a rating or review, it helps to support this show and it just helps me feel like this is actually worth doing, and especially when you share it with a friend too. Like, the biggest compliment you can give me is sharing this show with a friend, or sharing a specific episode with a friend that you think would like it. So please continue to do that and thank you to everybody who has been doing that.
Michelle (00:03:07) - And if you haven't taken the time to write a review or leave a rating on the show, please consider doing that. It's only takes a couple of seconds, and you don't even need to write any words down. You can literally just tap on the stars to leave a rating, which you can do on Apple Podcasts. You can also do it on Spotify, which not a lot of people know. It's kind of hidden. You have to go to the episode's main page or I'm sorry, the the show's main page, and then tap on the three dots, and then there's an option to rate the show. So anyway, helps me climb up the charts and be found by more people so that more people can ultimately live nourished and free. All right, let's dig into this. So we've been told that sugar is a drug, and having a food addiction is responsible for the struggles that so many people face when it comes to overeating, obesity, and having a poor relationship with food. Many experts feel really strongly, actually, that food can be addictive.
Michelle (00:04:01) - But others say that it simply feels like an addiction. So I want to dig into both sides of that argument. That way, we can better understand if it's truly possible to be addicted to food. In that way, you can better decide how you want to feel about this conversation in this topic and approach any future conversations about it. So many researchers are pushing to have food addiction recognized in an upcoming version of the DSM, which is our Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders. This is where we have, like our eating disorder diagnoses at and any other mental health diagnoses. The criterias are all in the DSM. So a lot of researchers want food addiction to be an official diagnosis, basically that you can get in an attempt to do this and make the argument for food addiction. The Yale Food Addiction Scale was developed as a tool to measure food addiction by assessing DSM five criteria, which is the latest version of the DSM for substance use disorder, but assessing this criteria in the context of food instead. So in order to discuss if food is addictive or quote unquote, a drug, we should really declare what we mean when we say addiction.
Michelle (00:05:21) - And honestly, I think this right here is the biggest reason why we have so many polarizing opinions about food addiction in the science community is because are we talking about a drug like addiction, or are we just talking about how certain foods can be easier to eat in high quantities? So let's discuss addiction in its most familiar and understood context. Substances. Drugs. Drug addiction is defined as a chronic relapsing disorder characterized by compulsive drug seeking end use. Despite the adverse consequences, it involves functional changes in the brain circuits related to stress, the reward system, and self-control, and a true addiction. Changes may last long after a person has stopped taking the drugs. So when we consider that definition right, we can see some crossover between food, quote unquote addiction and drug addiction, for example. Binge eating disorder involves a loss of control over the eating episode, and is happening at least once a week for three months. This is not dissimilar to drug addicts who have a chronic, relapsing compulsion to take the drugs. In the case of binge eating disorder, there's a chronic, relapsing compulsion to eat food, and that compulsion is strong enough to make that individual feel out of control.
Michelle (00:06:49) - Further, psychological dependence on food may be due to reliance on it for mood enhancement, or as a coping mechanism for stress or negative emotions. There is a connection between eating and how we deal with stress. Our reward system in our brain, and our ability to self-regulate. In other words, have self-control. So, for example, there's a systematic review of 32 studies that looked at neuroimaging in individuals with bulimia nervosa and those with binge eating disorder, and found that there are reductions in the overall size of the brain, as well as diminished activity in frontal striatal circuits, which is a region that's associated with self-regulation. Further, there is possibly some dysregulation in the reward center of the brain, even impulse control issues. But despite all of this. Is food really on the same caliber as an addiction? In 2018, there was a paper published in Neuropsychopharmacology. The two authors debated this concept of food addiction and whether there was true merit, to use that phrase or not, and I'll link these studies in the show notes.
Michelle (00:08:10) - I might even do an article on this. And so if I do end up writing an article, then I'll just link the article in the show notes. But regardless, you'll have access to the resources I'm mentioning. Either way, in the argument against food addiction, one of the authors, Paul Fletcher, notes that food addiction carries the claim that this resemblance occurs because certain foods have effects on the brain comparable to those of addicted drugs. Just like we talked about earlier, he goes on to say that the assertion that food has pharmacological effects on the brain. Demands strong and convincing evidence which has not been found. So he's basically saying like, hey, if we're going to say that food is addictive like a drug, we better have some good arguments and convincing evidence to back that up. And we don't. In his argument, he points out the fact that there's no one specific substance found to be addictive in food. We know, for example, that nicotine is an addictive substance in tobacco products. But what is the addictive substance in food? Right? If it were sugar, then why are we also finding ourselves? Behaving the same way around potato chips, which have no added sugars.
Michelle (00:09:25) - Wouldn't we also be seeing people walk into a supermarket and crack open a bag of table sugar and down it in the middle of the aisle, right? Like if it were salt, then why are we finding ourselves behaving the same way around foods like candy and cookies and ice cream, which have very little added salt? And according to the Yale Food Addiction Scale, which I mentioned earlier. What we seem to be addicted to, broadly speaking, is the ultra processed foods that have been engineered to taste really freaking good. You know what I'm talking about? The chips, the candies, the cookies, all the things. Those foods are generally high in two things both refined carbohydrates and fat. This is actually not something that we see naturally occurring in nature. We don't see these things co occurring in foods that are not bioengineered. So it makes them extra special on their own and extra tasty with the addition of flavors and salt and other additives. We're also seeing a big rise in the availability of these foods because of demand and feeding a population and cost and all of that, and makes these quote unquote, food addiction problems seemingly worse.
Michelle (00:10:42) - These foods are often low in fiber, they're easy to eat quickly, and they're calorie dense or energy dense. This means it's easier to consume more calories in a shorter amount of time, which could be a part of why they've developed a quote unquote addictive reputation, because more calories are just being consumed more quickly. Fletcher, who was an author on that article I mentioned, also argues that there is too much overlap between binge eating disorder and food addiction to really justify food addiction being its own thing and its own diagnosis, and that this could be because food addiction is not distinct enough from the symptom of binge eating. They're too similar, he said. There needs to be more validity and reliability of other characteristics for food addiction to be its own thing. And he suggesting there needs to be more consideration on the topics of tolerance and withdrawal. If we're going to introduce the word addiction here. When it comes to who, there just simply isn't the same physiological withdrawal and physical dependence issues that there are with drug and alcohol addiction.
Michelle (00:11:51) - He argues against all the right studies done on food addiction, and makes the valid point of how we can't directly correlate those to humans. Rats are incredibly different from humans to our food environment. Our emotions, our decision making abilities are just so vastly different from rats, and these are usually the studies that people cite when they're trying to make the argument for food addiction is studies done on rats. And for the most part, we have regular access to food rather than constrained access, which is usually the context of these science experiments done on rats. There's some sort of level of constraining access to food. And when we look at human studies, there's not enough compelling evidence in humans to justify food addiction as being a real condition. There's definitely an argument for there being similar dopaminergic pathways for reward in the brain, as well as these addictive like foods. And the second author on the article, Paul Kenny, discusses this at length in the paper. He's more on the side of like being for food addiction being an official diagnosis.
Michelle (00:13:02) - But we have to keep in mind that this is nowhere near the magnitude of euphoria and buzz and a high that somebody gets off of a drug or from excessive alcohol use. Overall, they share similar neurological pathways, but the highs and the lows are vastly different than magnitude is just not comparable. So is it really that justified to say we can be addicted to food if the response is in the brain? Those similar in pathways sure are vastly different in the degree of severity. Some might say yes. And you can see why this is a hotly debated topic among professionals. The last thing I want to mention on this topic is that having a difficult relationship with food, marked by good and bad labels, can often drive us towards those bad foods even more. If there's some sense of scarcity or the sparkle effect of that being extra special or even extra off limits. It can make us want them even more. We're like children in that way, you know? Not surprisingly, those foods that are thought to be bad are also the ultra processed ones that people vilify and claim to be highly addictive, and that our research mentioned earlier is shown to be addictive.
Michelle (00:14:23) - Like this can increase the feelings of being addicted to that food simply because you struggle with self-control around them. So there's feelings of guilt, shame, and rebellion all coming together. Remember, there is no one food that is inherently good or bad for you unless you're a allergic to it. B it's expired, or spoiled or moldy, or c if it has shards of glass in it or razor in it, then yeah, it's definitely bad for you. We don't want to eat that thing. So when we look at this topic of food addiction, just to kind of summarize here, there's a few things that we need to consider. Number one, we need to be sure we're clear about what we're meaning when we say the word addiction. And we need to specify if we mean truly addictive like a drug or just addictive like. Second, there should be a clear substance in food that influences the sense of addiction. And at this time, there is no one specific substance in food that we know of that is causing somebody to feel addicted.
Michelle (00:15:33) - Rather, it's a combination of factors that make food highly palatable, like refined carbohydrates, fats, sugar, salt, and other food additives. Food addiction as a diagnosis or as a concept could be refuted simply by the fact that withdrawals and the euphoria from food is nowhere near the caliber of substance abuse. Also, something we need to remind ourselves of is that we may feel more addicted to food simply because we decided some foods are off limits, which creates this complex psychological reaction to those foods making us feel addicted. And then the last thing I want to say, to summarize, is that psychological dependence may occur due to reliance on that food to feel better, or to enhance your mood, or as a coping mechanism for stress or emotions that are difficult to handle. So I hope that this helped you with trying to navigate this concept of food addiction. And as a reminder, if you find that you are struggling with feeling addicted to food. Willpower is not going to get you anywhere. And that is not an evidence based approach to overcoming feeling that way around food, our relationships with food, feeling addicted to food.
Michelle (00:16:54) - It's a biopsychosocial matter that needs the right tools. It needs the right support and needs the right approach. I've worked with many, many women who have come to me saying they feel addicted to food and left their time with me within four months or less, feeling like they're free, and they finally have this weight lifted off their shoulders and this burden off their back, and they can finally live their life without feeling like a slave to food. If you want to learn more about what it looks like to work with me and how you can be free from feeling like a slave to food as well, make sure you check out my show notes, where I'll have a link to learn more about working with me. And if you love this episode, be sure to share it with a friend. And of course, leave a rating.