Can You Be Addicted to Food? Sugar?
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Have you ever wondered if you can be addicted to food, or to sugar?
In this blog, I break down:
Theory of food addiction
The science of food addiction
Why you can feel addicted to food but not be addicted to food
Problems with the research on food addiction
The Yale Food Addiction Scale
Why your history with restriction and dieting make a big difference in how you approach foods that are highly palatable.
Before we get into it…
Let’s get this clear. Feeling addicted to food is very real. I’m also going to rip off the bandaid with a very controversial statement that food addiction is not a real addiction, in the true sense of the word. Same with sugar addiction. So can you be addicted to food? The short answer is: no.
I want to talk more about this because it’s a good thing that you’re not addicted to food. True addictions you have to live with for the rest of your life. This, you can heal from.
The Theory Behind Food Addiction
The food addiction theory is that it's a chemical addiction. When we're talking about addictions, there are two main categories: chemical addiction and process addiction.
When it comes to food, it’s not too far from the truth to draw parallels between certain eating disorders and process addictions. They are perpetuated when the behaviour itself is addictive. Behaviours like gambling, sex addiction, or behaviours where you're not necessarily ingesting a chemical substance. It’s the behaviour.
Chemical addiction is we traditionally know more as substance abuse addictions like alcohol, methamphetamine, or cocaine. One one hand, the positive about food addiction being compared to a chemical addiction, is that we do have an understanding of how dopamine and serotonin work when it comes to these addictions. It helps us to distinguish why food doesn't make sense as a chemical addiction, because the way it affects those neurochemicals is quite different from substances.
For example, if we're talking about someone taking cocaine, it has an effect mainly on two main neurochemicals, which are serotonin and dopamine (which come in discussions about food addiction too). The effect of cocaine on serotonin and dopamine is nearly immediate. The drug hits the bloodstream, and creates a high very quickly, which peaks and dies down somewhat quickly.
When it comes to food, if someone has a low blood sugar, there's the 15-15 rule. You need to take a specific dose (15g) of a substance containing nearly pure, or pure sugar (like sugar cubes, sugar packets, cola, or orange juice) and wait at least 15 minutes to see if whatever you've ingested has that effect on raising blood sugar to the adequate concentration. Even from that basic concept, we know that food, and in this case sugar, doesn't hit the bloodstream that quickly- which rules it out as a chemical addiction.
What the Research Says
The first thing I want to say is that food addiction research is really new, although there is a lot of it. That said, the research has primarily been done in rats- the research on humans has been largely inconclusive. We can’t assume that what we're seeing in rats is something that can be translated into human experience, which happens outside of a cage, outside of a study, and has a host of factors that are far more complicated. We need to sort of take some of this research in context and be very careful about not extrapolating it out.
That said, there are results that in some ways, validate the theories of food addiction, but you also have results that counter that- again, in rats. The results aren't consistent.
Plus, the research that is out there is…not great. Just because its published research does NOT mean it’s scientifically sound. Unfortunately, many don’t understand that, so they Google it to look up the research, find an open access study that looks legit, go right to the summary, which concludes food (or sugar) addiction is real.
Or, a blog writer or reporter or someone who’s not educated on how to read and interpret and critically analyze research does the same thing, and next thing you know there’s an article going viral about how you’re addicted to sugar. It becomes so challenging to get this mass media out of people’s minds, because it’s emotional! People feel seen and understood when they read something like this. It resonates so it sticks- and spreads like wildfire. It’s really hard to undo that.
There’s No Formal Definition of Food Addiction
Another important mention when talking about the research is there has yet to be a formal definition of food addiction. We're using this term and developing our own thoughts about what it means with no one actually defining it. Are we talking about a specific substance, like sucrose? Are we talking about a big group of foods? What does that mean? That's another piece to know that at this stage- we don't even have a formalized definition for food addiction. It’s a big problem.
De-pathologizing food
Food is meant to be rewarding. There's nothing pathological about that. We are meant to experience pleasure and to have those responses in the brain to eating food- it’s how we’re built! It’s a survival mechanism. This way, when it's time to eat again we are driven and compelled to eat and not get distracted by another task.
Just because eating foods we enjoy activates dopamine and serotonin and the reward centers of our brains, doesn’t mean it’s automatically an addiction. There are so many other behaviours that activate those same pathways, and we would never think of them as an addiction. We can use examples of neuroimaging where pleasure centers light up, completely separate from addictoin. For example, when a mom holds and smells her baby, listening to good music, hearing a funny joke, winning a prize, being in love. Just because it's activating those pathways doesn't mean it's an addiction.
And We Can’t Forget Diet and Wellness Culture Conditioning
Remember Pavlovian conditioning? Where the dogs were trained to associate a bell with food, so eventually they drooled when the sound was made? Essentially this means if we are anticipating something to happen, we're going to see it happen. Our biases impact our interpretation of the event.
With food, if we expect to be out of control, that can continually set us up to have these repeat experiences. There is neuroimaging research that shows when a food is restrained or restricted, it has an exaggerated response in those pleasure centers in the brain. We want the thing that's forbidden. The more you say, no, I can't, I shouldn't, the more enticing the food becomes.
The Yale Food Addiction Scale
Manhy of the studies published use the Yale Food Addiction Scale to measure what might be addictive behaviours in humans. It’s a valid tool that has been validated in, in my opinion, incomplete ways. Namely that the food addiction scale does not account for food restriction. We know by the neurobiological research restricting food creates a draw to the food, a heightened response to that food, and a likely and experience of eating that food that feels more out of control or chaotic. So how is it possible that the food addiction scale can measure any degree of food addiction if we aren't accounting for restriction and restraint?
If it doesn’t account for diet history, and we’re not disqualifying people who have a diet history, their behaviour and mindset towards that food is going to be affected. Their neurochemical response to eating or thinking about that food is going to be affected. And that leaves the findings inaccurate.
Labelling Food Addiction Is Disempowering
To begin wrapping things up, labelling behaviours as food addiction worries me. I see it cause people to feel disempowered, because it gets tied in with their identity- “I am a food addict.” I will hear from people who are coming out of a 12-step food addiction group like Overeaters Anonymous, which taught them to restrict more foods, express remorse if they ate something not on their food plan, or other shaming approaches that made them feel worse and worse about themselves. It creates a relationship with food where people feel powerless to their “food addiction.”
But thankfully, somewhere along their path, they got the diagnosis of an eating disorder or they discovered the idea of intuitive eating. They came to work with me and developed a healthy relationship with food. Now, they can look back on and say, “oh my gosh, two years ago I thought that I was addicted to sugar. And now I eat it and I’m fine. I can move on. And I don't feel out of control.”
There is hope! Even if you may feel in the depths of food addiction right now, or feel like you have an addictive relationship with food, it won't always be that way. You can absolutely heal that.
Until next time,
Britt
References
Westwater, M. et al. (2016). Sugar addiction: The state of the science. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00394-016-1229-6
Kahathuduwa, C. et al. (2106). Brain regions involved in ingestive behavior and related psychological constructs in people undergoing calorie restriction. lhttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2016.08.112
Join me for The Food Freedom For Life coaching program! This program is for those who know they want to improve their relationship with food and their body, but are afraid of spiralling out-of-control and want a proven, step-by-step system to go from feeling crazy around food to normal again. Book a free consult to learn more.
