Food addiction is a real thing, but it’s not recognized in many healthcare, workplace, and school settings.
If there were no such thing as food addiction, though, we wouldn’t struggle to lose weight. Those who wanted to lose weight and keep it off would just cheerfully avoid the foods that didn’t support their new lifestyle. If there were no such thing as food addiction, all people would have a simple, healthy relationship with food: we’d happily eat the correct amounts of the right foods.
But that’s not how it is in real life. Most people find losing weight to be a difficult and emotional process. It is a wrenching ordeal that is prone to failure. Those who do lose weight often fail to maintain the weight loss over time. They cannot resist the feelings they know they’ll have if they eat certain foods, such as sugar, fat, and refined flour. When sugars, fats, and carbohydrates are refined, they signal the hedonic or reward pathway by providing a rush of dopamine to the brain much faster than if the food was in its most natural state, such as with an intact whole grain. This neurochemical process makes it too hard to stop eating.
How does a person cross the line from consuming food as a natural survival behavior to being addicted to food? Some people have an impaired dopamine 2 receptor. This could be because of a genetic defect the person was born with. A person can also impair his/her own dopamine receptors by chasing too many dopamine “hits.” It’s how most addictions latch hold, and it works the same way if you’re getting the dopamine charge from long-term repeated consumption of engineered ultra-processed foods. Certain food ingredients, like sugar and simple carbs such as flour, result in what Dr. Vera Tarman, author of Food Junkies, describes as “chasing the dragon:” just one is too much and a thousand isn’t enough.
We can tell that most people misunderstand food addiction by the way healthcare professionals, family, friends, coworkers, teachers, and administrative staff believe that “everything in moderation” applies to food. Addiction, by definition, is a condition in which a person is usually not capable of moderation.
Unhealthy food, unlike many other addictive substances, is everywhere: colleagues bring donuts to work, a mom brings homemade cookies to the PTO meeting, there are disease-promoting fast food establishments in (of all places) hospitals, and family members coax you into having “just a taste” of that trigger food you’re trying to avoid. If there were no such thing as food addiction, moderation would be fine. But “just a taste” just doesn’t work when you have a food addiction.
If you’re wondering whether you have a food addiction, Food Junkies offers a list of assessment questions. If you answer “yes” to more than three of these questions, you may have a food addiction:
- Have you ever wanted to stop eating and found you just couldn’t?
- Do you think about food or your weight constantly?
- Do you find yourself attempting one diet or food plan after another, with no lasting success?
- Do you binge and then “get rid of the binge” through vomiting, exercise, laxatives or other forms of purging?
- Do you eat differently in private than you do in front of other people?
- Do you eat to escape from your feelings?
- Do you eat when you’re not hungry?
- Have you ever discarded food, only to retrieve and eat it later?
- Do you regularly fast or severely restrict your food intake?
- Have you ever stolen other people’s food?
- Have you ever hidden food to make sure you have “enough”?
- Do you obsessively calculate the calories you’ve burned against the calories you’ve eaten?
- Do you frequently feel guilty or ashamed about what you’ve eaten?
- Do you feel hopeless about your relationship with food?
“For most, abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.”
The two most common causes of relapses from food addiction recovery are:
- A food environment either inside or outside of the home riddled with tempting junk food like homemade baked goods, or their ultra-processed store-bought counterparts.
- Food ingredients, like sugar, hidden in seemingly “safe” food such as spaghetti sauce, ketchup, nut butters, salad dressings, and whole grain breads, to name just a few.
If you have a food addiction, it’s important to have support as well as to carefully read ingredient labels.
If you have (or think you have) a food addiction, if you’re a healthcare professional who works with patients who need to lose weight and improve their diet, or if you care about the health and emotions of those around you, I recommend you stop the practice of pushing junk food onto other people. I also suggest picking up a copy of Food Junkies. The author defines food addiction and, through several personal stories and case studies, describes the often difficult but achievable road to recovery.
About the Author
Gigi Carter, nutritionist, personal trainer and author, resides in Washington state. She earned her bachelor’s degree in economics from John Carroll University and a master’s in business administration from Cleveland State University. Over the last two decades, Carter’s career has been mostly with Fortune 500 companies in financial services and manufacturing. Carter made a career change in 2016 to pursue her master’s in nutrition sciences from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she graduated with honors, and launched the socially conscious nutrition and wellness practice, My True Self, PLLC. Carter is a licensed nutritionist in the State of Washington, and certified personal trainer and senior fitness specialist with the National Academy of Sports Medicine. She is the author of The Plant-Based Workplace and co-author of The Spinach in My Teeth.