the food addiction.

years ago i heard that m&m’s contain a certain ingredient that made you addicted to them. i searched far & wide through the depths of google, bing, wikipedia & i even asked jeeves! alas, i searched & searched to no avail. i therefore decided to end the wild goose chase & move on with my life. however, fast forward to the present & it turns out that i may have heard right!

a recent study sent to us by a study-abroad fitness nerd has shown that it is possible to become addicted to unhealthy foods & this addiction may be responsible for the global obesity epidemic. to sum up the findings, it’s been shown that high-fructose corn syrup can cause behavioral reactions in rats similar to those produced by drugs of abuse such as cocaine. this “food addiction” hypothesis was shown at the 2013 canadian neuroscience meeting by dr. francesco leri & suggests that someone could be addicted to food just as one is addicted to drugs of abuse. while the increased availability of highly-palatable foods worldwide could partly explain the high incidence of obesity, this is not the entire reason. how do you explain why some people are obese & others are not while they’re given the same amount of available food? dr. leri & others suggest that one important factor could be individual differences in vulnerability to addiction. surveys show that in the consumption of cocaine, only a small percentage of individuals who try the drug actually become addicted. dr. leri wanted to know if he same could be true of “addictive foods” & his data produces evidence that laboratory animals show a shared vulnerability to develop preferences for sweet foods & for cocaine.

while this research may lead to novel pharmacological interventions for obese individuals, it may also help increase the public’s understanding of the effects of unhealthy food choices. public education regarding nutrition & fitness is one of the goals of The Fitness Nerds, so we are very interested in what these studies result in!

if you’re interested in reading the full story, follow this link! sadly, my university does not have access to the journal “addiction biology”, so we cannot read the entire paper, but we’ll work on getting that for you asap!!

now, this doesn't mean you can blame your "addictive behavior" for overindulging in sweets! it's quite the opposite. it's scary to think that our bodies could be addicted to food in the same way it's addicted to a dangerous drug. because of this, it's best try to stay away from foods with high amounts of high-fructose corn syrup to begin with, so your body doesn't even know it exists! there's a lot more to the corn syrup ingredient that most people know, so look out for an upcoming post that explains a little more about this scary ingredient & how it’s popping up in places you wouldn’t expect!!

keep studying, nerds! we love your enthusiasm (:
xx TFNHQ

*DISCLAIMER: all of the data from this post is from the provided link. we did not personally deal with these mice. let's just say, we'll leave it to the professionals.