Can You Be Addicted to Food?
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When you feel like you can’t keep your hands off sweets or potato chips, it’s understandable that you might find yourself asking the question, Can you be addicted to food?
If you have intense cravings, feel a loss of control, or binge on certain foods, your experience is very real and it can very much feel like you have an addiction to food.
Given the fact that food addiction is a hot topic debated among scientists and health professionals, it can be difficult to uncover the truth, especially when our society is polluted by diet culture.
Although there are internet articles pushing the narrative of food addiction and treatment centers “specialize” in this area, the truth is that food addiction isn’t real.
Let’s break down what science and literature say. The facts will make it clear that the answer to your question, Can you be addicted to food? is a resounding NO.
Food Psychology and the Factors Influencing Eating Behavior
Food psychology and the factors influencing our eating behaviors are highly complex. Food is subjective, meaning that you cannot objectively measure a person’s experience with food.
Many factors, influences, perspectives, and opinions affect food’s place in your life. The way you interact with food and the daily choices you make regarding food can depend on:
The day or time of eating
Your current environment, circumstances, or situation
Your emotions and mental state
Your hormones and energy levels
Each person is unique and each BODY is unique.
Food is not black and white. There’s simply no way to determine whether food can be addictive when it looks so different for everybody.
What Does the Food Addiction Research Say?
There’s no formal clinical definition of food addiction that’s universally accepted, meaning that professionals are left to their own discretion to define it. Red flag.
When tested whether food or a specific macronutrient like carbohydrates/sugar is addictive on a physiological level, studies found zero evidence to support this.
Most of the food addiction research performs studies on rats whereas human studies are minimal. A rat’s experience with food can’t directly reflect a human’s experience. Rats don’t deal with peer pressure, emotions, or complicated dynamics that can affect their choices.
Sugar Addiction Studies Are Taken Out of Context
The sugar addiction studies that many people refer to when speaking on this topic fail to consider the entire context.
Within the studies, rats adhered to a feeding schedule in which they were given intermittent access to sugar. The rats were forced to fast for 12 hours and then following the fasting, they were given free access to sugar for the next 12 hours.
Separate rats were given a feeding environment where sugar was continually available to the rats at all times, with no period of fasting.
After the four-week study, the results revealed that addiction-like behaviors ONLY occurred when the rats were given intermittent access to sugar. The rats who had sugar available at all times did NOT show addiction-like behaviors.
Consider the context! Rather than a physical addiction, these studies demonstrate that out of control eating behaviors occur under food deprivation.
When the rats were uncertain of when they would receive food again, food was seen as unpredictable and scarce, so they desperately overate for survival purposes.
Doesn’t this sound like dieting and restriction followed by rebound overeating?
The Yale Food Addiction Scale Ignores Diet History
The Yale Food Addiction Scale is a questionnaire that clinicians use to determine if a person has a food addiction (even though there’s no clinical definition?).
This screening tool is purely based on the individual's feelings and experiences with food and self-assessment alone cannot determine whether a substance (food) is truly addictive.
The main issue is that chronic dieting and restriction aren't taken into account by the Yale Food Addiction Scale. The questions resemble classic thoughts and behaviors associated with disordered eating.
Just like the rat studies’ claims of sugar addiction ignore the circumstances, so does the Yale Food Addiction Scale. Shouldn’t dieting history be considered when we KNOW that restriction causes addiction-like behaviors?!
What About the Effects of Sugar on the Brain?
We’ve all heard the concern, sugar lights up the same brain pathways as drugs.
Yes, brain imaging does show the effects of sugar on the brain are similar to cocaine. Sugar and cocaine light up the same reward center, producing dopamine, making us “feel good.”
Do you know what else produces dopamine? Music, laughing, exercising, and being in love. Food is a natural reward and we’re wired to experience pleasure from eating because it’s one of our basic needs.
Drugs hijack the natural reward pathway with an exaggerated pleasure response. Neuroimaging shows us that the exaggerated pleasure response we see from sugar that matches drug addiction is only seen in the context of food restriction. When there’s unconditional access to food, neuroimaging depicts the brain’s response to sugar as similar to any other natural reward.
We’re designed to depend on food and therefore a physiological addiction can’t occur from something we can’t live without.
You can feel addicted to food when you’re chaotically eating, bingeing, or out of control around food. It’s a biological survival mechanism your body uses as a response to any form of mental or physical restriction. Even if it feels real, that does NOT mean food addiction is real.
Do You Want to Stop Feeling Out of Control with Food?
After breaking down the studies and understanding the research, we know that dieting and restriction induce compulsive eating tendencies.
If you want to stop feeling like you’re addicted to food, the key is to incorporate ALL foods into your life, giving yourself unconditional permission to eat. This way your body and your mind can understand that food is available and there’s no need to jump into survival mode.
As a Registered Dietitian and Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor, I offer 1-on-1 virtual intuitive eating coaching where you can learn to make peace with food and free yourself from the pull that food has on you. Let’s get in touch so that you can start healing your relationship with food!