Lec 14 and 15 - food craving and addiction

Question 1

define addiction and dependence

Answer 1

Addiction is restricted to the extreme or psychopathological state where control over drug use is lost.’

‘Dependence refers to the state of needing a drug to function within normal limits; it is often associated with tolerance and withdrawal (symptoms), and with addiction as defined above.’

Question 2

what is food craving?

Answer 2

Motivational construct
Subjective experience
Verbal behaviour (private experience – reported through verbal behaviour, or self-report rating)
Eating behaviour (choice, intake)
Appetitive behaviour

Among the definitions of craving offered by the Collins English Dictionary are “to long for” and “to desire intensely.” The latter is closest to the meaning typically used or implied in studies of food craving (Hill et al 1991)

Question 3

moreishness is frequency assoicated with which food?

Answer 3

chocolate

Question 4

what are some of the chemical constituents of chocolate? (7)

Answer 4

Theobromine 
Caffeine
Phenylethylamine
Serotonin 
Tryptophan
Magnesium
Anandamide

Question 5

what did Strachan et al. (2004) find in rats?

Answer 5

animals will learn to avoid deficient/harmful foods.

Question 6

how many chocolate bars do ‘chocoholics’ eat compared to control?

Answer 6

Chocoholics consumed 1-70.. on average was 9.4 bars per week
20% of recommended calorie intake
45% of recommended sugar intake
30% of recommended fat intake

‘Controls’ (non-chocoholics)
2.2 bars per week

Question 7

Smit, Gaffan & Rogers (2004) - theobromine and caffeine combination

Answer 7

Psychoactive effects of cocoa powder and methylxanthines (theobromine and caffeine)

Participants completed a test battery once before and twice after treatment administration. Treatments included 11.6 g cocoa powder and a caffeine and theobromine combination (19 and 250 mg, respectively).

= Identical improvements on the mood construct “energetic arousal/mood” and cognitive function were found for cocoa powder and the caffeine+theobromine combination versus placebo. Cocoa powder wasn’t quite sig on positive mood/hedonic tone.

=for cognitive functioning, caff + theo were a bit more significant but this doesn’t make it unique because there is more caff in tea and coffee.

Question 8

Michener et al 1994 - choc

Answer 8

Pp were given a number of sealed boxes to take away with them and were asked to consume the contents when they got a craving (these boxes were numbered). They wrote down intensity of craving, ate the content and then marked down craving again after 90 minutes. They did not measure craving immediately after.

Chocolate cravers consumed a chocolate bar, the caloric equivalent in “white chocolate” (containing none of the pharmacological components of chocolate), the pharmacological equivalent in cocoa capsules, placebo capsules, nothing, or white chocolate plus cocoa capsules (this is pharmacologically similar to white cocoa chocolate)

=Chocolate reduced self-rated craving. The cocoa capsules, placebo, and no treatment conditions had virtually no effect

This result indicates no role for pharmacological effects in the satisfaction of chocolate craving. It also suggests a role for aroma (accounting for the superiority of chocolate over white chocolate), and sweetness and texture (accounting for the superiority of white chocolate over placebo), though calories may also play a role. The observations suggest that chocolate cravings are satisfied by sensory experience

Question 9

what emotions are associated with consumptin of chocolate?

Answer 9

Before
craving, hunger, dysphoric mood (depression, anxiety, anger)

During
moreishness,

After
contentment, calmness, relaxation, joy, activation, less tired, guilt, continuation of dysphoric mood

Question 10

Benton, Greenfield & Morgan (1998) - statements about chocolate

Answer 10

There were 3 factors – craving, guilt and functional approach. Functional included statements such as ‘I do not think chocolate is bad for you if eaten as part of a balanced diet’ ‘I eat chocolate when I am hungry’
= Craving associated with eating chocolate to relieve negative mood, and guilt with failure to resist eating chocolate (and with negative mood)
= Positive statements about chocolate were associated with its use as an energy-giving snack/functional approach

Question 11

‘Traditional’ view of food craving
vs
Craving as a consequence of restraint

Answer 11

Traditional view = eliciting condition, leads to craving which leads to eating
Craving as a consequence of restraint = eliciting condition, leads to resisting, which leads to craving which leads to attribution of addiction

Eliciting conditions include:
exposure to eating-related cues
anticipation of pleasure of eating
‘hunger

Question 12

moreishness - when does it occur? and why?

Answer 12

‘causing a desire for more’ .. it is a type of craving that occurs during eating. It is craving during abstinence
Due to attempted restraint of eating ahead of its termination by physiological satiety

Eg We start eating food cookies- we have enjoyed this and experience moreishness- these are viewed as snacks so we try to restrain eating two, but this is not enough to make us full so we still have appetite for more

Question 13

define addict, addiction, addictive and dependent

Answer 13

• addict n. a person addicted to a habit especially one dependent on a (specified) drug; (colloquially) enthusiastic devotee of sport or pastime
• addiction n. condition of taking a drug excessively and being unable to cease doing so without adverse effects
• addictive a. causing addiction and dependence
• dependent a. unable to do without something (esp. a drug)

Question 14

Gearhardt 2011

Answer 14

makes the case for food addiction
argues that food is hyperpalatable
and foods share multiple features with addictive drugs.

Question 15

Avena et al 2008- sugar in rats

Answer 15

compared rats that have intermittent access to diet of normal lab chow and a 0.1mL 10% sucrose solution. (12 hours of access to food) The control group had ab libitium access to this diet (24hr access).

=By day 21 intermittent-access rats consume an initial “binge” of sugar
=Total energy intake and body weight are unaffected

but problems with word binge..
the word ‘binge’ is suggests loss of control. But we don’t know if this was loss of on control.
Also the animal has learnt that it can only eat 12 hours a day, and so it learns that it needs to consume enough food to maintain healthy body weight and so adapts – so perhaps not a bad thing. Also if the rat is binging on sugar, they are also binging on chow – so its not specific to sugar

Question 16

Tunstall and Kearns (2014) food versus intravenous cocaine

Answer 16

Rats weight was kept at 15% below what it would be if normal diet was consumed - so was maintained at 85% of their free-feeding weight
used skinner box with lever, the reward for one lever is intravenous injection of cocaine, the other lever reward is food followed by Extinction sessions in which lever pressing results in neither food nor drug delivery,
nor presentation of associated auditory cues
then Reinstatement sessions

=Rats chose to respond for food (‘Grain’) over cocaine on 70-80% of trials.
BUT during Re-instatement tests (next day and 3 and 8 weeks) the cocaine-paired cue motivated responding more strongly than the food-paired cue.
This indicates that the cocaine-paired cue has acquired stronger motivational properties (i.e., the cue strongly motivates cocaine seeking).

Question 17

Consuming drinks with low-calorie sweeteners has the same effect on energy intake and body weight as consuming water.. true or false?

Answer 17

true

Question 18

reward deficit hypothesis

Answer 18

overtime our brains are exposed to addictive drug that cause the drug to be less rewarding than previously so we must take more of it to get sufficient reward. This is due primarily to downregulation of striatal dopamine D2 function, that reduce reward sensitivity. In turn, this causes an escalation of consumption and, in the case of exposure to energy dense sweet and high-fat foods, results in obesity.
as found by Johnson and Kenny 2010- rats were given access to a cafeteria-style diet of energy-dense (high fat and/or high carbohydrate) food. There were 3 groups - normal food, normal food + restricted access and normal food + extended access. Prior to cafetieria exposure, they learned to turn a wheel

=All of the rats weighed 300–350 g when the exposure started. Over the next 40 d, the first two groups gained 80–100 g, which is developmentally typical, whereas the extended-access group gained almost twice as much.
= the minimal level of electrical current required to keep the rats turning the wheel, remained stable in the chow-fed and restricted access rats but increased in the extended-access rats, reflecting a disruption in brain reward function. Similar disruptions occur after self-administration of addictive drugs
= Striatal dopamine D2 receptors (D2R) were downregulated in obese rats, similar to previous reports in human drug addicts. Thus this may contribute to the development of addiction-like reward hyposensitivity

BUT
It remains unclear if such reward hyposensitivity in obese individuals is manifested before the development of obesity and related solely to genetic factors (“reward deficiency syndrome”) or if overeating can cause disruption in reward processing.
AND
More logically, consumption might be expected to be reduced if it is experienced as less rewarding (Rogers and Hardman, 2015
AND
Hardman et al. (2012) - Used ATPD to reduce brain dopamine function. Participants consumed a TYR and PHE free amino acid drink (had to deplete tyrosine and phenylalanine to reduce dopamine) versus balanced amino acid drink
=ATPD did not increase eating. If anything it reduced food intake (by 18%)

Question 19

Hardman et al. (2012) dopamine

Answer 19

Used ATPD to reduce brain dopamine function. Participants (17 men) consumed a TYR and PHE free amino acid drink (had to deplete tyrosine and phenylalanine to reduce dopamine) versus balanced amino acid drink
=ATPD did not increase eating. If anything it reduced food intake (by 18%) And hunger was lower after this meal.
provides evidence that we don’t do more of something if it is not rewarding.

Question 20

what is binge eating and what eating disorders does it occur in ?

Answer 20

episodes of eating significantly more food in a short period of time than most people would eat under similar circumstances, with episodes accompanied by feelings of lack of control.”
Occurs in Binge Eating Disorder, Bulimia Nervosa and Anorexia Nervosa

Question 21

out of a sample of women with a diagnosis of Binge Eating Disorder, how many met the criteria for substance dependence (DSM-IV), and addictive disorder? and what are the 4 symptoms of addictive disorder?

Answer 21

92% met adapted criteria for substance dependence (DSM-IV), and 41% met adapted criteria for addictive disorder (Cassin et al 2007 )
- Lack of control, recurrent failure to resist impulses, pleasure or relief at the time of binge eating and increase sense of tension immediately prior to binge eating)

Question 22

what is the relationship between ‘food addiction’ and weight status?

Answer 22

women with BED have higher chance of obesity than women without BED
37.5% of obese women were food addicted on a stringent scale

Question 23

what does john davies argue in his book?

Answer 23

argues that explaining one’s behaviour as either within, or outwith, one’s control has consequences according to the situation, and in a climate of moral and legal censure it makes sense to choose the latter.

People would rather believe it is a disease and that the addiction is out of control, it takes away personal responsivity and allows them to get help.
This is unhelpful because in thinking you cant control it, it undermines effort to gain control if one wants too

Question 24

what are the effects of attributing overeating and obesity to addiction (physiological inevitability) ?

Answer 24

Attitudes of others - reduces stigma if thought of as a disease.
Can also lead to diminished personal responsibility and motivation to change - if dieters attribute dietary failure to being weak willed and addicted, rather than external effects they were more likely to fail.

Question 25

Hardman et al. (2015) - effects of manipulating beliefs about addiction

Answer 25

Participants read a passage confirming or dis-confirming existence of food addiction. Then measured
Food intake and Food addiction scores, including Yale Food Addiction Scale
=for some people, the notion that foods were addictive caused people to be cautious of food. Whereas a few people gave in and didn’t try to control (relaxed their constraint). The SD of intake therefore went up.

=Variability in intake, but not mean intake, of indulgent food was higher in the Real condition than in the Myth condition. These findings suggest that endorsement of the concept of food addiction may encourage people to self-diagnose as food addicts and thus explain their eating behaviour in terms of addiction

Knowing something is addictive can make something hard to stop, but can also make us cautious to start a behaviour.

Question 26

who studied cannabnoid in choc and what did they find. and who did it in mice

Answer 26

Di Tomaso et al. 1996 - identified anandamide in chocolate and cocoa powder, but not in white chocolate or coffee. This suggests that the presence of this endogenous cannabinoid is relatively unique to cocoa products.
but they were low concentrations that were detected. Calculations show that a 70-kg person would need to eat about 25 kg of chocolate to ingest sufficient anandamide to achieve a noticeable “high.” This conclusion is supported by results showing that amounts of anandamide several orders of magnitude higher than those present in cocoa products are required to produce significant cannabimimetic behavioural effects in mice (Di Marzo et al 1998).

Question 27

Some argue there is reason to believe in a physiological basis for the initiation of chocolate craving, because in many females, the craving occurs almost entirely in the period around the onset of menstruation … cite

Answer 27

Tomelleri et al 1987)

Question 28

Farooqi et al 2007

Answer 28

investigated this hypothesis in two individuals with the very rare condition of congenital leptin deficiency. Both were tested before and after 7 days of treatment with recombinant human leptin. They used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure differential brain activation by visual images of food compared with images of non-food in the leptin-deficient and leptin-treated states
=it was found that After leptin treatment, hunger ratings in the fasted state decreased, and satiety following a meal increased. Visual images of food elicited no differential activation of mesolimbic areas in the leptin-replaced state
=the leptin-deficient state was associated with marked activation in the anteromedial ventral striatum (nucleus accumbens and caudate nucleus) which positively correlated with increased ratings of liking for the foods.