We’ve all seen the Lays commercials where they “Bet You Can’t Eat Just One” of their amazing chips. And it’s true. It is really difficult to eat just one chip. We call them addicting, just like chocolate or cookies or your favorite flavor of ice cream.
When we say this, we are usually joking. Nobody shoots up Lays potato chips or has to go to potato-chip rehab to quit their addiction. But what if I told you that food addiction is real? As real as drug or nicotine or alcohol addiction?
Well, it is. But to understand how food can be addicting, we need to understand how addiction works in the first place.
The Basis of Addiction
Addicting things – alcohol, nicotine, drugs, sex, exercise, food – are addicting because they make you feel good. They do this by mimicking or causing the release of “feel good” chemicals in your brain like dopamine or endorphins.
In the case of dopamine, substances can cause the release of dopamine in your brain, which binds to dopamine receptors. Other drugs can bind dopamine receptors themselves. Either way, the same “feel good” effects are produced.
When your brain goes through this a lot, it starts to become resistant to it, which we call tolerance. Your brain develops tolerance by decreasing the number of dopamine receptors in your brain, so that you have to do more of the thing that makes you happy to reach the same level of happiness.
This is the common thing that occurs in drug and alcohol use, where your body pushes you to use or consume more and more to get the feelings that cause you to use in the first place.
This same effect can occur with the opioid system of the brain, which is normally activated by endorphins (the feel-good chemical released during exercise), but artificially stimulated by opiate drugs like painkillers or heroin.
But how is any of this related to food?
Food and Addiction 
Everybody knows that fat and sugar taste good, but it’s more than just flavor that makes them addictive. There have been many studies that simulate overeating of fatty or sugary (or fatty AND sugary) foods in mice and how that affects their brains.
One effect seen is a decrease in the number of dopamine receptors with subsequent increases in sugar intake, just like the reduced number of receptors and increased use that we see in drug tolerance.
Additionally, scientists have found a decrease in the number of dopamine receptors in obese humans that correlates with their weight. So, the higher the weight, the less dopamine receptors they have. This means that they would need to consume larger amounts of sugary and fatty foods to elicit the same effect as those foods had in the past.
Another result is the activation of the opioid system caused by sugar intake. When rats were taken off of their sugary diet, they exhibited the same withdrawal symptoms that are typical of opiate drug withdrawals.
Rats who had been on a high-fat diet would traverse a painful and difficult terrain to get to high-fat foods rather than eat low-fat foods that were easily accessed.
All of these results indicate that fatty and sugary foods are, in fact, addicting.
Social Implications
So, since fat and sugar are addicting, it’s not my fault if I eat too much of them, right? Because I’m an addict and it’s out of my control?
Not quite.
Yes, these things are addicting. But the addiction does not just hit you out of the blue. It occurs as a result of over-consumption of fatty and sugary foods, and perpetuates continued over-consumption. So, that means I should never eat anything with fat or sugar, right?
Again, not quite.
Rats who had been consuming a lot of fat and sugar and then were not allowed to fat and sugar binged and relapsed as soon as they were allowed access to fatty and sugary substances. So cutting yourself off completely will likely lead to extreme overconsumption and relapse into unhealthy habits.
So, as with everything that has to do with a healthy lifestyle, consume them in moderation. A few potato chips and a little bit of chocolate won’t make you a full-blown addict, but too much will, so it is important to be aware of how much you consume and what’s going on in your brain in order to help yourself to live a healthy lifestyle.
