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Fatty Foods May Cause Cocaine-Like Addiction
WrongSizeGlass writes "A new study in rats suggests that high-fat, high-calorie foods affect the brain in much the same way as cocaine and heroin. The rats that gorged themselves on the human food quickly became obese."
If you consider what the most fast and junk food are:
pizzas, hamburgers, hot dogs, french fries, sandwiches, kebab rolls, baguettes, kfc's fried chicken, pan pizzas, nuggets and so on.. like this illustrative image shows.
It's not only high-fat thats the problem, but also high-carb. I never really crave for high-fat but low-carb food and my body feels a lot better with low-carb food. It's the combination of high-fat and high-carb that is bad, and leaves all the fat in your body because carbs burn first.
You ever sucked d**k for a cheeseburger?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
...I have just as much respect for fat people as I do for drug addicts.
Oh, few... At first I read that as rats gorging themselves on human fat. Wait a minute... maybe the end of the world will come when rats get a cocaine-like addiction to eating humans. Everybody PANIC!
Any questions?
Yeah, can I get mine over easy? It goes in the syringe better.
They are also much easier to obtain than cocaine and cost less.
Does this mean fatty food is "that" addictive, or does this perhaps mean cocaine isn't that addictive? Though I suppose the mere notion of shades of "addictiveness" can be dishonest itself, considering the binary nature of addiction (you either are, or you aren't, and exhibit a different set of behaviors based on that).
Also, I wonder if this study holds true for various other pleasurable inputs. As far as anyone knows, cocaine acts by causing direct stimulation of the reward center, a property shared by (as far as I know) any behavior the brain seeks to reinforce, including eating energy dense foods, so I wonder if things like bathing and receiving affection could also demonstrate similar "cocaine-like addictions," witness OCD handwashing and narcissism.
Seems like the scientists continue to find supporting evidence for the brilliant motto, "Everything in moderation. Including moderation." Except probably cocaine.
Assuming that rats and humans are somewhat similar in their responses, this paints a really sickening and embarrassing picture of fat people. Although they are harmed physically by their obesity, they continue at their own detriment. Maybe they really are like the obese rats who continue to eat food in the face of physical pain, when the healthier rats have been scared away.
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
They taste a lot better most of the time than stuff that is good for you without qualification. That keeps your brain cookin with pleasure-inducing chemistry.
The one thing about these foods that I don't agree with is that the poor need to eat them because they can't afford food that is good for them. That's a load of rubbish. My wife has been able to buy enough good, canned vegetables like beans, chickpeas and corn to feed a family of four for at least a week for $50. You can do a lot with those staples if you try.
High fat is not the problem at all. Try gorging yourself on a block of good cheddar and see how much you can eat and how addictive it is. It's not. The addiction is all in the sugars, starches and carbohydrates in general.
Now to read the actual paper:http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/nn.2519.pdf
"The cafeteria diet consisted of bacon, sausage, cheesecake, pound cake, frosting and chocolate" - in other words, full of sugar!!! Yet the news article says it's "fatty foods..." when in reality, it's sugary foods the rats were being fed, that fat being incidental. But of course, the sugar lobby is strong...
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
Funny, I lost 40 lbs eating high-fat low-carb food, purposely not exercising, and eating whenever I was hungry. And my blood pressure went down to normal from its high of 145/95, so I could stop taking blood pressure medication as well. I'm healthier than I've ever been.
Of course, unlike these rats, I did not eat cheesecake, frosting or other foods high in refined carbs. But this POS study doesn't bother to differentiate between high-fat/high-carb, high-fat/low-carb, etc, let alone about the balance or type of fatty acids present in the food (e.g. grass-fed bacon vs. grain-fed). This is not science, not even close.
How about the HFCS question?
For fuck's sake, there's HFCS in just about everything we eat these days. After the recent study, I went through my pantry. Wanted to see precisely how much of the stuff it was in.
- Hot dogs? CHECK.
- Oscar Mayer "deli meats" for sandwiches? CHECK.
- Breakfast cereals? Almost universal. If it has "modified corn starch", that's HFCS under a disguised name.
- Salty-type snacks? Check. Even the supposedly all-natural pita chips.
- Anything from Chef Boyardee. Check.
- Frozen pizzas waiting to be heated up? Check. Turns out they add HFCS to the goddamn tomato sauce.
The list goes on but I think you get the picture. We're being fed HFCS EVERYWHERE and we just saw a major study done showing an effect on HFCS, either by brain chemistry or satiety reflex, causing obesity. If they were feeding rats the same stuff in their "fatty foods" (and cheesecake is OMG FUCKING FULL OF IT)...
Millions of years of evolution makes animals crave high calorie fatty food and eat as much of it as possible, because they never know when they're going to get the opportunity to do so again. Human beings are no different.
High fats aren't the problem - high carbs are, especially the kinds in corn syrup and sugar (starches are a little less bad, but still bad overall).
Note that you need some, but not as much as you get in some of these foods.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
"...and we just saw a major study done ..."
Surely you could provide a link for a major study that was just done.
HFCS is the same as sugar. That's what's being talked about it the thread you have decided to post in.
In the Documentary Super Size Me, several Doctor's noted the same behavior and stated that Fatty Foods found in Fast Food restaurants (McDonald's in this example) were equal to cocaine in terms of addiction.
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But eating junk food produces a high, a euphoric feeling sometimes. I suppose that's why some foods are called "comfort food".
I can't compare to drug addiction, because I've never experienced that, but a high is definitely present.
Sometimes, with my tinfoil hat on, I've wondered if Taco Bell was slipping something addictive into the food that makes me keep coming back.
Bacon is sugary? Sausage is sugary? Granted, the cake entries are both high-fat and high-sugar, but saying all the food items are high-sugar is wrong. They are all high-fat, though.
Your chemical dependence on dihydrogen monoxide sickens me. It kills thousands of people every year, can't you see how horrible it is?
Orwell was an optimist.
Yet the news article says it's "fatty foods..." when in reality, it's sugary foods the rats were being fed, that fat being incidental.
No, it's sugary AND fatty foods that the rats were being fed. The summary ignores the sugar, but you're not being any better by ignoring the fat. When the rats get addicted to plain bread or just piles of granulated sugar, then we can talk about your theory.
Just because you sold your soul to the devil that needn't make you a teetotaler. --The Devil and Daniel Webster
>>>the sugar [and fructose-added corn syrup] lobby is strong...
Fixed. So-called "sugar free" foods that substitute sugar alcohols like sorbitol aren't much better. It's still all sugar and still has fattening properties. (Also gives you lots of gas due to the alcohol.)
More specifically: The fructose half of the sugar is the problem, not the glucose. Plain-old corn syrup (pure glucose) is not harmful to the body, since it's glucose that the body's cells need.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
To be fair, your body uses fructose too, it's just used by the liver, not by each individual cell. Too much fructose is a problem, but your body does need and use some fructose.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
"A new study in rats suggests that high-fat, high-calorie foods affect the brain in much the same way as cocaine and heroin.
Like heroin and alcohol, food is so addictive that the withdrawal symptoms can kill you! Just say NO to eating!
Free Martian Whores!
I think this is another case where the media turn something that might be good: increased understanding of how obesity works, into something bad: telling obese people that they have no control over their behaviour, fueling the "it's no my fault, I have a serious illness" justification for doing nothing to help themselves.
beauty is only a light switch away
the sugar lobby is weak (USA). That's why there is so damn much HFC in everything. It's the corn lobby that's strong
Sugar is also high fructose and therefore also fattening.
Chemistry fail. Fructose is a sugar, but not all sugars are fructose. Glucose is not fructose.
Is there really a cure for *anything* that's addictive for "everyone"? (pls note the links at the end of the article) http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/03/28/fatty.foods.brain/
A lot of sausages actually contain a lot of carbohydrates. If you eat sausages, you should go with the ones that are almost full meat. The common belief is that bacon is some extremely fatty food, but it really isn't if you don't mix it with carbohydrates. It's salty though, and that's not really good either.
This is /.
/b/.
The only place with less "socially acceptable" people is
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Well, here ya go. Sugar is as addictive as cocaine
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
Here ya go.
No, the price of sugar is kept high due to trade restrictions for the US sugar lobby.
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
the sugar lobby is weak (USA). That's why there is so damn much HFC in everything. It's the corn lobby that's strong
Although there appears to be (or have been at one time) a 'sugar Mafia'; years ago, in a restaurant, I noticed that the packets of sugar had an interesting set of statements on the back:
The last line had everyone at the table laughing at the mental image of the sugar Mafia coming around to strongarm cooks... "That's a tasty-looking cake you got there... be a shame if something happened to it."
Nope, HFCS is worse than sugar. http://www.themoneytimes.com/featured/20100326/high-fructose-corn-syrup-worse-sugar-id-10105392.html
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
It's salty though, and that's not really good either.
Don't worry, the nanny state is hard at work here too. We'll keep you safe, because you are obviously too stupid to make informed decisions for yourself.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
In Eastern Europe, salo (UK, RU)/szalonna (HU)/slanina (RO), which is bacon with everything except the pure fat skimmed off and then smoked, is eaten daily by many people and they don't tire of it. There, there isn't any maple syrup or pancakes to blame its popularity on. Pure lard is indeed highly appealing to people.
They didn't try all the foods individually, otherwise they might find that bacon is not included. I too thought that they must mean "high fat + high sugar", or maybe just high sugar (but high fat + high sugar is the worst combination for packing on the pounds). If you try eating a load of bacon you'll get full after not too many calories, protein is very filling. I've been eating plenty of protein + fat and low GI carbs for months now and I'm not obese. Yes, I have been exercising also but if I'd been eating cake and ice cream this whole time I'd still be fat.
which is totally what she said
If you do any real exercise then you need a pretty high proportion of your total calorie intake in complex carbs . It's worth distinguishing between simple carbs and complex carbs, You don't really need much sugar in your diet, but you need a reasonable amount of complex carbs.
If you're a total couch potato you're going to have health issues whatever kind of diet you take.
Though I agree, I ask of you to suggest some numbers, some reasonable proportions rather than "much" and "reasonable".
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
How about the HFCS question?
For fuck's sake, there's HFCS in just about everything we eat these days. After the recent study, I went through my pantry. Wanted to see precisely how much of the stuff it was in.
- Hot dogs? CHECK.
- Oscar Mayer "deli meats" for sandwiches? CHECK.
- Breakfast cereals? Almost universal. If it has "modified corn starch", that's HFCS under a disguised name.
- Salty-type snacks? Check. Even the supposedly all-natural pita chips.
- Anything from Chef Boyardee. Check.
- Frozen pizzas waiting to be heated up? Check. Turns out they add HFCS to the goddamn tomato sauce.
The list goes on but I think you get the picture. We're being fed HFCS EVERYWHERE and we just saw a major study done showing an effect on HFCS, either by brain chemistry or satiety reflex, causing obesity. If they were feeding rats the same stuff in their "fatty foods" (and cheesecake is OMG FUCKING FULL OF IT)...
That's a major reason why I limit the amount of processed foods I eat. I've been doing this for a long time and cook most of my food from scratch. It does not really take a lot of time and the quality of my meals has improved greatly.
A while back, I came across this article by Michael Pollan and I agree with it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html
"Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants."
Avoid processed/prepackaged stuff as much as possible.
I've been doing this weird thing lately.... "cooking". From base ingredients. I don't mean some kinda "all natural" kick, but most of my meals are cooked using basics. Flour. Sugar. Water. Various cooking oils. Beef/Chicken/Vegetable stock. Spices. Rice. Pasta in reasonable amount. Vegetables - fresh or fresh frozen -- which should take up a larger portion of your meal than they probably do. I also started exercising* a few times a week, and eating reasonable proportions -- and as a result of those changes have lost forty pounds and counting. I still eat the crappy stuff with too much HFCS and excessive fat (I've a mental addiction to cheeze-its and butterfingers) but in moderation.
THe problem here isn't HFCS. It's not fatty foods. If anything, part of the problem lies in looking for external factors to blame. It's eating too much food, too regularly, and most of us not getting any significant exercise*. In my case, for a long time it was lack of knowledge of when is "enough" to eat .(Hint - if you feel full when you're done eating, you've eaten far too much.) Once you have that knowledge, it's also lack of willingness to exercise self control.
The point of this mini-rant: look to yourself when trying to find a reason. For the vast majority of people, it starts and ends there. If you think it's HFCS -- ok, fine. But HFCS in quantity is far easier to avoid than you make it sound. Hell, fresh bread takes 30 minutes of actual time once a week, without even using a bread machine. Most other alternatives are as easy; or come with a slight increase of time in exchange for healthier food that tastes as good or better.
* By "exercise" I'm not talking about anything drastic. I started walking my dogs for 30 minutes at a brisk walk, 4-5 times a week. I also started using stairs instead of elevators for up to three flights at work and not just one flight. More recently I've started running, but that's after I lost most of the weight and I do it because (amazingly) I find that it feels good.
You need to balance your choices to achieve moderation. Eat the fatty, sugary stuff, but then take the cocaine to burn off the calories. Soon you'll reach your ideal weight.
Unfortunately we're hardwired evolutionarily to crave these things in order to cope with lean times, and to top it off these foods are typically cheaper and have less prep time involved.
>>>the sugar lobby is weak (USA). That's why there is so damn much HFC in everything.
Bzzzz. The sugar lobby is STRONG and have erected protective tariffs that raised cane sugar's cost to artifically-high levels. Therefore companies look for cheap alternatives (HFCS). This is a classic case of how government laws, which appear good on the surface to protect American sugar workers/farmers, actually cause unintended and harmful consequences.
The sugar tariffs should be removed, so we can import cheap sugar from elsewhere (like Brazil) and therefore make HFCS too expensive to use.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Pasta is not good, not least because wheat is generally not good for you. Naturally occurring sugar is still sugar - it matters not. With fruit you may get a few extra nutrients with it, but it doesn't make the sugar content itself any better for you.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
That argument is silly.: you would have no objection to the food companies could put lead in their food as a sweetener or any other toxin that happened to enhance the taste because you view it as the person's responsibility to know what is in their food. You think I'm going to carry a wet chemical lab around with me to test food every time I'm hungry? The bottom line is that part of the reason why we have a government is to precisely to prevent people from passing poisonous or other misleading substances off as nutritious food. If you don't like it, move to some third world country where that sort of thing is acceptable.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
One nice thing about bacon, particularly if you like it crispy, is that you can cook a good chunk of the fat out of it. Sure, it's not great for you, but crispy bacon in moderation isn't too bad.
The link was to an article about a assemblyman who wants to BAN salts in NY, and cut salts in manufactured products.
This is not the same as requiring proper and correct food labeling.
When people complain about the nanny-state, they aren't complaining about companies having to tell you, correctly, what's in their products, it's when the state says you can't do something as opposed to making the decision yourself based on correct labeling.
Stupid, sexy Flanders.
HFCS isn't everywhere. It's just in all the crappy food that you have in your pantry.
Did you think about what you were posting before you posted it?
Sugar is a class of chemicals of which fructose, sucrose and glucose are examples. Nothing you said contradicts what I said. I didn't say anything about table sugar and neither did the OP I was replying to.
The difference between "Fructose" and "Sucrose" (table sugar) is significant, biochemically.
Sucrose is a Glucose + Fructose molecule, linked by a glycosidic (read: "Oxygen atom") bond. The body uses an enzyme, Sucrase, to split up that sucrose into its glucose and fructose componenets.
Sucrase acts, indirectly, as regulator of sorts -- when a whole lot of sucrase is being used, the body observes that change and reacts accordingly, "Hey, we're good on sugar!"
But with High Fructose Corn Syrup, the need for Sucrase is bypassed, leaving that regulatory system out of the loop.
The Sugar lobby may be big, but the Corn lobby is much, much, bigger. And it's heavily subsidized. The main reason HFCS is cheaper than sugar is because of government subsidies.
Though I agree, I ask of you to suggest some numbers, some reasonable proportions rather than "much" and "reasonable".
Without knowing any physical characteristics of the person in question, their target weight and what their exercise regiment is like, assigning values is pretty pointless, and possibly misleading. Filling in "much" and "reasonable" is an exercise best left to the individual.
Reminds me of this advertisment in the July 23, 1956 issue of Life, claiming that eating sugar "...offers a new way to more effective weight control."
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
You have it backwards - that bill would allow people to choose by adding their own salt to food, instead of having it arrive with some unknown quantify of salt in it already. As I read it, that bill did not ban restaurants from having a salt shaker on the table. (If so, I would oppose it). So it doesn't actually restrict salt, it just makes it "opt in" instead of having no choice.
After the ban "against excessive salt in processed foods" :
- People who don't like too salty food and people with medical problems (hypertension) :
buy processed foods.
- People who like salty food and who don't give crap about their health :
buy processed foods.
sprinkle some additional salt before consumption.
---
Before the ban :
- People who like salty food and who don't give crap about their health :
buy processed foods.
- People who don't like too salty food and people with medical problems (hyper-tension) :
too bad for you !
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
but crispy bacon in moderation
Now there's two things I never thought I'd see in the same sentence!
I'm pretty sure you've got that backwards. The primary fat storage mechanism the body uses is the release of insulin to drive excess glucose out of the blood to be stored as fat. Your body likes to burn fat as fuel and is very well-evolved to do so.
Bad article. Conflates fat food with high carbohydrate food. Bacon == good. Frosting, with sugar == bad.
The real addiction here is carbohydrate, and it's a pretty simple equation:
1) carbohydrates increase blood sugar levels;
2) blood sugar levels increase insulin levels;
3) insulin levels cause fat cells to hold on to fatty acids instead of cycling them through as usual;
4) with your fat cells stealing energy from your blood stream, your other cells start starving for energy;
5) starved for energy, your body becomes hungry, and you exhibit "addiction" behaviors.
Fat is good for you (trans-fat is not fat, it's frankenfood). Carbohydrates are the source of all evil and the cause of the "diseases of civilization", including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, alzhiemers and other chronic diseases.
Stop eating carbohydrates. It's simple.
For a great hour and forty minute lecture on the topic, google "gary taubes berkeley".
Wait, suggesting that we're eating bad foods is "looking to external factors to blame", but suggesting that we're eating too much food isn't? I don't see the difference.
The difference is between blaming the foods you eat, and accepting responsibility for your choice to consume them -- and there *is* a choice.
Beyond that, *everything* has HFCS in it. If you go to the grocery store and buy bread and apple juice, each of those probably have corn syrup in them.
Fresh meats don't. Frozen and fresh vegetables don't. Potatoes (even several brands of instant potato) don't. There's a huge list of things that *don't* have it -- but that depends on the types of things you're looking to buy.
Yes, it's theoretically true that we could expect people to cook all their own meals from scratch, never go out to eat, bake their own bread and juice their own fruits.
Nowhere did I say "all" or "never" though. I still go out. I still eat store-bought bread (though not as often). I still eat quick meals. I just do so in moderation, and never as much as I used to. Still -- there's this thought that "cooking from scratch" needs to be a difficult and arduous task -- when most of the time it seldom takes as long as required to bake a frozen meal, or run to the store to pick up some take-out. The only down-side is more dishes to wash ;) And it's possible to get juices without sugar added - mostly due to the increasing market for diabetics, but it does exist. Personally, I just eat the fruit these days instead of drinking juice but that's my own choice.
*Or* we could think about whether the people making billions of dollars from feeding us have some responsibility to provide healthy food, but I guess that's just expecting too much from people
It is expecting too much. Don't lose sight of the fact that they make billions of dollars by selling the things that people want to consume. If there's a market for other options, then things will be sold to fill that market. (And they are.) The only responsibility sellers have is to sell things that make money. That in no way abrogates our responsibility to know what we're eating.
Lets instead expect everyone to grow and butcher their own livestock and live off of what fruits and grains and vegetables they can grow in their own gardens, since we can't afford to trust the people providing our food
Of course we can trust. But we also should be aware of what we're putting into our bodies, shouldn't we? And not just take someone's word for it? Or just assume that because someone is selling it, it must be healthy for us?
Fat addiction is not sufficient to explain the United States obesity epidemic because fats are just as addictive in Sweden, Japan and Uruguay as they are in the United States but we only have an obesity epidemic here.
Government policy in the United States is designed to promote obesity by socializing the costs of obesity. The first cost is the food itself, which the government pays for in the forms of, to name two, food stamps and the earned income tax credit. Everyone in the United States is required, by law, to pay for food to feed fat people. Really. The second cost of obesity, greatly increased medical care, is now socialized as well.
Uh, dude, America has the LEAST socialized health and welfare policies of the first-world nations. I don't think you can blame socialized medicine for the obesity epidemic when we don't have universal health care like all those skinnier nations do, and we have a much weaker safety net for people who can't afford food on their own. If you want an insight into how government policy influences food choices, you might instead want to look into farm subsidies for certain kinds of produce.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
So here is the thing. Government policy in the United States is designed to promote obesity by socializing the costs of obesity. The first cost is the food itself, which the government pays for in the forms of, to name two, food stamps and the earned income tax credit. Everyone in the United States is required, by law, to pay for food to feed fat people. Really. The second cost of obesity, greatly increased medical care, is now socialized as well. Those costs could be reflected immediately to the individual in the price of insurance when the insurance market is deregulated and insurers are permitted to charge fatties more. If all those fatties had to pay for their food and pay more for health insurance then their would be a lot fewer fatties. Instead, now, a person who eats responsibly and exercises and who will require far less medical treatment as a result will pay the same amount for medical insurance as they guy who eats two dozen doughnuts for breakfast.
You do realize that the countries you mention at the beginning of you post (Sweden, Japan, and Uraguay) all have socialized medicine and provide food-stamp like programs for the poor? Nobody wants to be fat and sick. If I told you that if you moved into the projects and quit your job, you could eat Twinkies until you went into a diabetic coma, would you? If you want to look at government causes for obesity look at subsides for grain and sugar farmers, not the fact that now some poor people will get the same medical care as the rich.
> Those "studies" must be BS, because nobody ever said "man I'll suck your dick" for a pack of sugar.
I recomend you don't ask your nan what she did back in the war to get by then.
In conclusion supply / demand. If sugar were as restricted as coke your dick would be sucked for it just as much.
+----------------- | What is the question!
Buy your girlfriend some nice chocolates. You might be surprised.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The news article uses the headline "fatty foods" but that simply reflects the cultural bias against fat.
And the article also reflects the bias that everything begins in the brain. Check out this researcher's faculty page. He's obviously focused on the brain exclusively.
But seminal research like Good Calories Bad Calories shows us that the reactions are mediated by hormones. Brain effects follow the hormonal influence that makes us eat.
And carbohydrates, not fat, cause insulin release (and chronically elevated insulin levels in people who eat large amounts of carbs, i.e. almost everybody) which causes our cells to suck nutrients and glucose from our blood stream. This makes us hungry, so we eat more. And insulin causes our fat cells to store fat. Our liver converts fructose directly into fat. GCBC also provides a large amount of documented evidence that
Eating fat by itself causes no insulin response, and proteins have a much lower insulin response. Diets like the PaNu approach take advantage of this. The idea that saturated fat (which our bodies are composed of) is somehow bad for is is incredibly wrong. The modern research over the past 50 years that has got us to the deadly dietary guidelines that we still provide to diabetics today (low fat, high carb) is thoroughly researched in GCBC. I'd really recommend that anyone with an interest in this field (or just in losing weight) check out GCBC and PaNu.
The "Rat Park" experiment showed that addictive behavior results from stress.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
"""
Rat Park was a study into drug addiction conducted in the late 1970s (and published in 1980), by Canadian psychologist Bruce K. Alexander and his colleagues at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada.
Alexander's hypothesis was that drugs do not cause addiction, and that the apparent addiction to opiate drugs commonly observed in laboratory rats exposed to it is attributable to their living conditions, and not to any addictive property of the drug itself. [1] He told the Canadian Senate in 2001 that prior experiments in which laboratory rats were kept isolated in cramped metal cages, tethered to a self-injection apparatus, show only that "severely distressed animals, like severely distressed people, will relieve their distress pharmacologically if they can." [2]
To test his hypothesis, Alexander built Rat Park, a 8.8 m2 (95 sq ft) housing colony, 200 times the square footage of a standard laboratory cage. There were 16-20 rats of both sexes in residence, an abundance of food, balls and wheels for play, and enough space for mating and raising litters. [3] The results of the experiment appeared to support his hypothesis. Rats who had been forced to consume morphine hydrochloride for 57 consecutive days were brought to Rat Park and given a choice between plain tap water and water laced with morphine. For the most part, they chose the plain water. "Nothing that we tried," Alexander wrote, "... produced anything that looked like addiction in rats that were housed in a reasonably normal environment." [1] Control groups of rats isolated in small cages consumed much more morphine in this and several subsequent experiments.
The two major science journals, Science and Nature, rejected Alexander, Coambs, and Hadaway's first paper, which appeared instead in Psychopharmacology, a respectable but much smaller journal in 1978. The paper's publication initially attracted no response. [4] Within a few years, Simon Fraser University withdrew Rat Park's funding.
"""
Many people in today's industrialized society are under a lot of stress. Creating healthier communities may help reduce addictive behavior. One example of how to do that is here:
"About the AARP/Bluezones Vitality Project"
http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about
Another is here:
"Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy"
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
Vitamin D deficiency from being indoors too much also contributes to obesity and depression.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
For more on breaking out of a "pleasure trap" leading to obesity, see these:
http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness/dp/1570671508
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
This article fails to distinguish between fats and fast-burn carbohydrates.
There is much evidence that fast burn carbs are addictive due to the way that they cause boom-bust cycles of glucose levels. At peak glucose levels the body frantically tries to take glucose out of the blood stream and store it (ultimately as fat). It does this by dumping large quantities of insulin into the blood. The problem is that when the supply of glucose has dried up, the insulin is still there, and this causes a glucose crash, and intense hunger/food cravings. Boom bust causes you to eat too much and makes you fat. It only takes a few grams of sugar to have this effect. The powerful sugar lobby do not want you to know this.
But the effect of fat is less clear.
Fat have had an unfairly bad press. Granted some types of fat are moderately bad for you, and granted that when mixed with sugars, they make it easier to eat far too many calories.
However it is not clear that fats in themselves are in any way bad for your. Whereas sugars are the real enemy.