Lecture 15- Food Addiction

Question 1

Gearhardt et al. (2011)

Makes case for food addiction

Answer 1

Hyper palatable foods are similar to drugs

Energy density- pack a lot of calories per gram

Foods activate dopamine (reward) pathways

Question 2

TUNSTALL and KEARNS (2014)

Sugar more addictive than cocaine?

Answer 2

Rats chose to respond for food (‘Grain’) over cocaine on 70-80% of trials.

WHY?

Food is more immediate effect

potent enough (low dose)

Adverse effects of cocaine

Question 3

Criteria for binge eating

Goodman (1990)

Answer 3

(100%) A feeling of lack of control while binge eating

Question 4

J. B. Davies, 1997 (The myth of addiction)

Answer 4

Addicts like consuming drugs

Like to blame addiction; gets rid of responsibility

Reduced moral disgust

And allows them to get help

as they would rather believe that their problems are out of their control

Believing its a physiological disability stops people from trying to end addiction

Question 5

Prevalence of obesity and BED

Answer 5

BED prevalence is low

But the prevalence of obesity is much higher;

So if BED is explained by food addiction

It is not explaining much obesity as most obesity is not explained by BED

Question 6

Self-reports of food craving

Answer 6

They are not in themselves evidence of addictive behaviour

Question 7

Binge eating

Answer 7

Criteria for addictive behaviour

But currently it is unclear to what extent binge eating contributes to overeating and obesity

Most obese individuals do not binge eat or do so infrequently