Food Addiction: Craving the Truth About Food: Andrew Becker (Transcript)

This has an incredible economic impact in our society.

In 2008, it was estimated that obesity-related costs totalled $147 billion. So this affects every single one of us.

I believe one of the central problems that drives obesity in our society is the current food climate that we’ve created – the foods that cause us to ignore our full stomachs and eat until we incur health complications. These foods are very powerful and they give us a lot of motivation to consume.

So much so that in many people, that can actually cause addictive-like behavior.

So currently it’s estimated that 25% of obese individuals show significant signs of food addiction. This is measured by the Yale Food Addiction Scale, which is a tool that was developed to detect signs of substance abuse from consuming highly palatable food.

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Now I use this term a lot! Highly palatable food is food that is really high in salt, sugar and fat. And importantly these foods typically aren’t really found in nature. And so this Yale Food Addiction Scale has been used in many studies to show that many aspects of food addiction mirrored drug addiction.

So for example, Pertori and colleagues found that when they imaged the brains of individuals that showed 3 or more symptoms of food addiction, according to the Yale Food Addiction Scale, they had changes in specific brain regions that were similar to other participants with other addictive disorders.

A different study by Gerhart and colleagues found that when participants consumed a milkshake; those with a higher score on the Yale Food Addiction Scale showed greater activation in areas of the brain related to reward which is also seen with addictive drugs.

So these are just two examples demonstrating that research has been able to show that there’s a lot of overlap between specific areas of the brain between addictive drugs and the consumption of highly palatable food — which again are these foods that are really high in salt, sugar and fat.

So we can even look and find more examples of how food addiction mirrors drug addiction. We know that when someone addicted to drugs stops taking it, they go through withdrawal. Too many common symptoms of withdrawal include increased anxiety and loss of appetite.

Researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden showed that when they gave obesity-prone rats, a diet really high in salt and fat and sugar, and then they withdrew this diet, the rats showed increased anxiety and loss of appetite for the standard normal food.

We know that addictive drugs can cause people to develop a tolerance to them. This tolerance often leads to increased drug use and overdosing.

Researchers from The Scripps Research Institute in Florida showed evidence that the consumption of highly palatable foods can cause tolerance when they allowed rats to eat as much high fat and high sugary food as they wanted. They found that as the rats consumed these foods, the reward that they got from these foods decreased over time, driving the rats to overconsume these foods and gain weight. They developed a tolerance.

And so I know many of you are probably very sceptical to compare the power of certain drugs to food.

But did you know that when Lenoir associates gave rats a choice between cocaine or sweetener called saccharin? They actually prefered to consume the sweetener over the cocaine, which I think starts to really show the potential power that these substances can have.

And so these are just a couple of examples of a much larger growing body of evidence that is showing that people, Negus rodents show clear signs of addiction to highly palatable food as others show to addictive drugs.

So I want to explain to you how food which I know is required for life has the potential to be addictive.

An important point, I want to make is food that has more salt, sugar and fat that is typically found in nature is what seems to have the potential to be addictive. These are the highly palatable processed foods that I mentioned earlier like cookies, chips, chocolate, soda, fast food.

And so importantly when humans were evolving, over millions of years, they never experienced highly palatable food. They ate meat, nuts, fruits, vegetables that were found in nature. They also lived in a very food-scarce environment and had to constantly be seeking out the next meal.

And so this means that their reward pathways, which is the circuitry in the brain that drives us to do many of the necessary things for survival, never experienced highly palatable foods.

And research is starting to show that these foods can have negative consequences on our reward circuitry. For those that may be unfamiliar, the reward pathway zone makes us feel good when you do things that are good for your well-being. Examples include drinking water when you`re thirst, sex, being social with others and eating food when you’re hungry.

Evolutionarily, the reward pathway drove people to consume foods that would be more advantageous for survival. This means that they were driven to consume foods that gave them high amounts of reward, and foods that give you high amounts of reward, are typically that are really high in salt, sugar and fat.

And so for comparison, food like cake is most likely going to give you a higher feeling of award than something like celery, because the cake has more sugar and fat. The higher sugar and fat causes you to get a better feeling of reward, when you consume it. The evolutionary advantage of this is it gave humans an innate way to prioritize foods that would be more advantageous for them.

When we consume these highly palatable foods, and think of your favourite, mine is sweets, your brain releases a lot of this neurotransmitter called ‘Dopamine’.

And so dopamine is really well known for giving us motivation and drives and importantly when consuming many of the highly palatable foods of today, dopamine-signalling can actually be so strong it can motivate us to consume these foods even when we feel full.

And so this is one everybody who’s going to joke about using their second stomachs to keep eating dessert even though they accidentally over ate on dinner.

So, the part of the brain that makes and releases dopamine is called the ‘VTA’. And so when we consume these highly palatable foods, they travel from the VTA to many different parts of the brain and they activate many different parts of the brain to not only motivate us to consume these foods but also give us a feeling of reward – it’s that really good feeling you get when you consume your favourite treat!

You can all picture it and you can all remember it. It’s the reason you can all remember it is because not only does this pathway cause us to get these feelings of reward, but allows us to remember and anticipate these feelings of reward when these foods present themselves again.

And so, this is why you may get excited, when you see logos from your favourite restaurants, where you see pictures of your favourite foods and commercials on TV, maybe when you thought of your favourite food during this talk.

And so evolutionarily not only did this pathway allow humans to get motivated them to consume foods that were more advantageous for survival. But it caused them to remember how these foods made them feel, so that they would prioritize them over other foods that were less advantageous.

So it’s important to understand that when this pathway was evolving for millions of years, it did so to natural foods found in nature. These foods have reward values that do not compare to many of the foods in this new age.

And so what happens after millions of years of evolving to these natural foods found in nature, you now give humans an endless supply of junk food that has reward values that we’ve never experienced before.

And so research is starting to show that these foods can cause addiction.

And so pivotal study done by Johnson and Kenny took rats and fed them a highly palatable diet. This diet consisted of bacon, sausage, chocolate, cheese cake, pound cake and frosting. You know, ‘All the good stuff!’

And so when they fed these rats as highly palatable diet, what they found is as the rats consume these foods and gain weight, the reward that they got from these foods decreased over time. And they found that associated with this decrease in reward, these rats also had reduced dopamine D2 receptors in the stratum of the brain.

Now dopamine D2 receptors play a key role in proper functioning of the reward pathway and their down regulation is also seen with chronic drug use. Importantly it’s been shown that obese individuals also have reduced dopamine D2 receptors.

To take things even further, there’s a genetic mutation that occurs in the population and these individuals not only have reduced dopamine D2 receptors, but are over-represented in the obese population. And so it appears that reduced dopamine D2 receptors, in turn causes some neuro-adaptive responses that cause us to get reduced reward from highly palatable food.

So how this may work is as we are really motivated to consume these highly palatable food, we gain weight. This causes reductions in dopamine D2 receptors which leads to reduced feeling of reward from these foods called a ‘reward deficit’.

Because we have a reward deficit, we are driven to over consume these foods to get the same feeling of reward that we remember previously. This over-consumption of food leads to more weight gain which leads to further reductions in dopamine D2 receptors, which leads to further decreases from reward, which leads to more food consumption, which leads to more weight gain. And so you could see how this can cause obesity.

Now there are still many questions and mechanisms regarding food addiction that are left to be uncovered and answered. But I believe research will keep progressing the concept.

Although it is not hard to see the glaring signs of food addiction in our society, when you become aware of it, how many people do you know that consistently make multiple attempts to stop consuming these foods? Because they know it is negatively affecting their health. Maybe they’re buying products, hiring counsellors, doing research on their own, asking for your support. Yet, they can’t stop.

Isn’t it alarming that many people undergo bariatric surgeries just to stop themselves from consuming these foods and stop gaining weight? Yet, many still relapse, continue to consume these foods and gain weight.

I don’t think the solution to obesity is going to be in the form of a pill or procedure. No!

I think it’s going to be about drastically improving our food climate as a society and focusing on creating a healthier food environment in general. We need to start by improving the quality of the processed foods being produced.

You can take many of the foods already out there and improve the amounts of whole grains, reduce the amounts of sodium, improve the types of fats, reduce the amounts of added sugars, all within many of these foods.

And so what I’m asking is, anybody that listening to this talk and has influence to start taking this responsibility and improve our food environment.

Because I think research is showing the idea that every obese individual should just go on a diet and eat healthier on their own is just not going to work for a good percentage of the population.

I mean you wouldn’t expect a cigarette smoker or an alcohol abuser, just to reduce the portion size of their drug to a more manageable dose, because we told them it was going to make them healthier.

No! Many need real changes and intervention. And I don’t believe this would be any different from somebody that shows significant signs of food addiction.

It’s not about completely removing these foods from our lives, but significantly reducing their presence so that we can all have a better chance at managing our weight, because we evolve to have an insane drive to consume these foods.

I mean, 71% of the population is overweight; 40% are obese; one in three individuals are either pre-diabetic or already have diabetes. It’s costing us in upwards of a hundred and forty-seven billion dollars a year in health-related costs and it’s projected to climb.

We’ve been asking each other for decades to just obtain more willpower, eat healthier on our own. Yet, our health has not improved. It’s only gotten worse!

We need to start making actual changes and improve our food environment not just for ourselves, but for the future generations.

Thank you!

Resources for Further Reading:

Don’t Get Hangry: Feed Your Brain Healthy Food: Brad Bushman at TEDxColumbus (Full Transcript)

Why We Can’t Stop Eating Unhealthy Foods: Laura Schmidt (Transcript)

Transcript: Let Food Be Thy Medicine by Natasha Kyssa at TEDxOttawa

The Power of Addiction and The Addiction to Power: Gabor Maté Transcript

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