If there was a pill you could take that would stop you from gaining weight, would you take it? Imagine a world where you won’t have to worry about what you’re eating and how it will impact your health. You won’t have to turn to food for comfort when upset or anxious. Taxpayers will save money with obesity being less of a burden on our healthcare system. Sounds great, right?
Too bad there is a catch.
Sure, you won’t be turning to high-fat and sugar foods for comfort, but that is because you will no longer get that happy feeling that comes from eating some of our favorite, and least healthy, foods. In fact, you won’t want to eat them at all. Ever.
Our brains are wired to seek out food that will give us long-term energy. Before we had access to food we didn’t have to hunt for, we expended a lot of energy just finding our food. Now that we’re able to buy whatever food we want with very little energy, we take in much more than we could ever use. We still crave these calorie-dense foods because our brains don’t know if the food will suddenly run out.
Our brains not only trick us into thinking we want high-fat, high-sugar foods but it rewards us for it too. Endocannabinoids, a class of chemicals produced by the brain that are responsible for many pleasurable sensations, are in part, synthesized when we ingest high fat and high sugar foods. In fact, in obese patients it has been demonstrated that endocannabinoids are over-active in their brains. But it isn’t just our brains, our fat tissue, and perhaps liver and pancreas are actually able to produce endocannabinoids. These endocannabinoids work to reward us for eating foods high in sugar and fat, which in turn generate more endocannabinoids, and reinforce the behavior even further. The other “happy chemicals” in the brain, dopamine and opioids, are also active in our brains when we eat these foods.
Endocannabinoids aren’t only active when we eat. These compounds have long been implicated in drug and alcohol addictions. They are responsible for the “high” users feel and are the compounds that make treatment extremely difficult. It is logical then to acknowledge a different kind of addiction, one to food. Food addictions are very real and very difficult to treat. The same things are going on in the brains of food addicts as in the brains of drug addicts. However, unlike drug use, we need food to live, you can’t simply take away the drug in the case of food addiction, or give a pill that would take away the urge. Researchers, dieticians, and physicians will need to devote more time to studying the mechanisms of food addiction to try to combat it and stop it before it starts.
As far as a magic diet pill goes? It is more complicated than that. Maybe we might have to train our brains to not crave high fat and high sugar food. The secret might just be to consume in moderation, exercise more, and eat your veggies.
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