When most of us think of food addiction, we tend to picture extreme cases like My 600 lb Life on TLC, which is partly because we associate the term ‘addiction’ with heavy substance abuse like drugs and alcohol. This makes it easy to assume that someone suffering from a food addiction must weigh an extreme amount because they’ve gone overboard with their eating habits.
Unfortunately, this just isn’t the case.
Similar to the newly coined term, Dad Bod, there’s a new expression called being Skinny Fat. This happens when a person is actually a healthy weight, but survives on an unhealthy diet and restricts calories in an effort to combat their poor food choices so they don’t gain any weight.
But these are just some examples of food addiction. The truth of the matter is that many of us are battling our own food addictions and we may not even realize it.
With that said, it’s time to learn more.
What Is A Food Addiction?
Although ‘food addiction’ is very real and serious, there’s no official definition of what it is exactly. On top of that, similar to any addiction, it can take on many forms ranging from an obsession with calorie counting or restricting your food intake to downright overeating. The term can also be used when certain foods, like junk food, actually cause you to be addicted.
So, for the purpose of this article, we’ll keep it simple and say that a food addiction can be anything from an obsession with food, to uncontrollable urges for certain foods that lead to overeating. And the overeating in this case does not necessarily mean you eat too many calories, rather, it can mean that you’re overeating the wrong types of food, as in the case with being Skinny Fat.
You could quite literally be addicted to foods such as your morning coffee or late night desserts. Without those staples in your routine, you may find yourself irritable or unhappy. If that’s the case, you might have a food addiction on your hands.
Since the definition is a bit vague, here are a few things to watch out for.
According to Food Addicts these are:
Do you find that certain foods give you that ‘I can’t just eat one’ feeling?
Are you constantly thinking about food or when and where your next meal will come from?
Do you eat differently when you are home alone versus out with friends?
Do you eat large quantities of food in one sitting instead of spacing out smaller meals?
Are you someone who snacks all day and never actually feels full?
Do you fast or restrict your calorie intake drastically in an effort to prevent weight gain?
Do you eat when you’re bored and not actually hungry?
Have you felt the need to overexercise in an attempt to balance out a poor diet?
Are you obsessive about how many calories you take in versus how many you burn?
Do you feel guilty or ashamed when you eat a ‘bad’ meal?
Have you given up or felt hopeless that weight loss is unattainable for you?
I want to point out that these are not the only questions you should be asking yourself if you think you could have a serious food addiction. What I’ve tried to show you here is that a food addiction can be more common than you think.
But what makes this an addiction?
The Addiction Behind Food Addiction
We can be addicted to food thanks to the fact that certain foods can trigger your brain to react in a similar way that drugs and alcohol can.
Have you ever wondered why a smoker can’t just up and quit cigarettes despite the hundreds of warnings and commercials touting that smoking causes cancer?
Drugs and alcohol cause a disruption in your brain’s normal chemistry balance, and unfortunately, some foods can have that same effect.
Here’s how it works.
Our brains have been wired to react to the world around us. For example, when you touch something hot, your brain sends a signal to move your hand so you’re not left with a burn.
In the case of drugs and food addiction, ‘feel good’ signals in the form of dopamine – a neurotransmitter responsible for sending out messages from our brain to our nerves – floods our brains when we ‘use’, whether that’s through food or drugs. This flood of good feelings is like having natural morphine flowing through your veins. It can give you a euphoric feeling that leaves you without a care in the world.
The problem is, because we experience this process in the form of a ‘rush’, the feeling is short lived. Once the rush is gone, you’re left in a ‘crash-like’ state wanting more. This is what causes drug addicts to keep using, and the same goes for food addicts.
I had to wonder, what is it that makes certain foods so addictive?
I mean, have you ever tried to eat just one Girl Scout cookie? It’s virtually impossible, at least for me.
I believe that the two biggest culprits making us sick are added sugars and food additives.
Here are the biggest food additives to watch out for. You’ll find these ingredients listed right on the nutrition labels of some of the most common junk food.
Food Additives Can Make You Addicted To Food
The reason many of us can’t just eat one potato chip or one cookie is thanks in part to the food additives that are found in our everyday foods. One of the worst offenders is monosodium glutamate, also known as MSG.
Monosodium glutamate, MSG
Many people are familiar with MSG due to their local Chinese food take out restaurants, but that’s not the only place it’s hiding. It’s a small ingredient added to food as a way of enhancing flavor.
According to Dr. Frank Lipman, MSG can be found in as much as 80% of processed foods, which can be anything from potato chips to salad dressings.
According to WebMD, the short term side effects include:
Headaches
Mild mood changes
Tingling
Heart palpitations
Vivid or bizarre dreams
Burning sensations
Tightness in the chest
Even asthma like symptoms
All of that is possible from something as small as a bag of potato chips.
But, that’s not all.
According to a report from Fox News, research conducted on animals found that MSG can trigger a 40% increase in appetite. The study also stated: “People who consume the most MSG are nearly three times more likely to be overweight than those who don’t eat it at all”.
MSG is what’s responsible for that ‘I can’t just eat one’ feeling. You know, the one you get when your arm is halfway down the tube of a Pringles can. You can thank MSG that.
This tiny ingredient confuses your body by shutting down the hormone leptin, which is responsible for telling your brain that you’re full. The end result: you can’t stop eating.
And this turns into a vicious cycle whereby the more MSG you eat, the more you will crave foods that have it, setting the perfect stage for an unsuspecting food addiction.
But MSG isn’t the only one to blame. High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is also at fault.
High fructose corn syrup
Remember those tasty Girl Scout cookies I mentioned earlier? Well, HFCS may be the reason you’re unable to eat just one.
I often find that there’s some confusion regarding HFCS due to the recent launch of commercials funded by the corn industry (Yes that’s right) that promote it being safe, healthy, and good for you.
So what exactly is high fructose corn syrup?
In short, HFCS is a corn syrup that’s been scientifically engineered and contains added enzymes to make it taste sweeter than traditional corn syrups.
It’s used as a cheap way to make foods taste sweeter and you’ll find it in almost all of your processed ‘sweets’ on the market, including our beloved Girl Scout cookies.
The problem is, unlike traditional sugar, your body does not understand how to process the Frankenstein ingredient so it ends up getting stored as fat.
A team of researchers at Princeton University studied the effects of HFCS on rats and the results were astonishing. “Rats with access to high fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same”.
The research also proved that, “in addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long term consumption of high fructose corn syrup led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen”.
As if that wasn’t enough, this harmful additive also increases your cravings for high fat foods, creating a vicious cycle that can turn into a food addiction.
In one study, researchers compared the effects of fructose, the sugar found in HFCS, to glucose, or traditional table sugar.
Participants were given a cherry flavored drink that either contained 2.5 oz of fructose or glucose. The individuals studied were given a scale to rate how hungry they were prior to drinking the beverage.
Participants were then shown images of high calorie foods and asked whether they would prefer to eat that food now or save it in exchange for a monetary award one month later.
The result: those who consumed the fructose drink were more likely to choose the high calorie foods instead of waiting for the reward. Researchers were able to conclude that the fructose corn syrups actually increase your cravings for high calorie foods.
Similar to MSG, HFCS is a sneaky little ingredient that could be causing our food addictions or making them worse.
So if MSG and HFCS are both additives used to make foods taste better, what about the artificial sweeteners used to make foods taste sweeter without using any calories?
How do they affect our health?
Artificial sweeteners
With the rise of low calorie diets came the need to have drinks that tasted as good as their original versions, but contain zero sugars or calories.
Introducing artificial sweeteners.
The most common ones are:
Acesulfame potassium
Aspartame (what you’d find in the blue Equal packets)
High fructose corn syrup
Neotame (found predominantly in zero calorie drinks)
Saccharin (what you’d find in pink Sweet’N Low packets)
Sucralose (found in Splenda packets)
Sugar alcohols such as sorbitol, xylitol, mannitol, and erythritol
These bad boys can be as much as 40 to 700 times sweeter than regular sugar without any of the calories!
In theory, artificial sweeteners sound great; they’re zero calorie flavor boosts. But, although you’re saving on calories, you could still end up gaining weight according to a compilation of studies published in the US National Library of Medicine.
The American Cancer Society conducted a study in the 1980s on the effects of artificial sweeteners on 78,694 women. Those who consumed the artificial sweeteners showed a 7.1% increase in weight.
At this point you may be wondering how artificial sweeteners cause you to gain weight and become addicted, and that’s a fair question.
According to Dr. Mercola, these toxic sweeteners:
Stimulate your appetite
Increase cravings for carbohydrates
Encourage fat storage
As you can see, artificial sweeteners are yet another contributor to the food addiction cycle.
One of my favorite books by celebrity personal trainer Jackie Warner, This is Why You’re Fat and How to Get Thin Forever, stresses that sugars are to blame for our food addiction.
With good reason, Jackie Warner believes that added sugar is in too many foods found in our current diet.
Added sugars
I showed you in this article that hidden sugars are everywhere, so I couldn’t agree more with Warner. I’ve even shown you how to avoid the excess sugars in this article.
The point is, when we consume sugars, we end up craving them even more throughout the day.
So if you start your morning with a nice, flavored coffee and your sweetener is a sugar laced creamer or you add your own artificial sweetener packets, you’re going to end up craving sugar and carbohydrates for the rest of the day.
This is what makes us addicted. That feeling of wondering about where our ‘next fix’ is makes it hard for us to say no to junk food. Our ‘fix’ is snacking on or eating things we know aren’t exactly healthy for us, but crave anyway.
Now that you know why we’re addicted, let’s talk about how to break the addiction.
How To Cut Your Food Addiction
1. Don’t just look at calorie counts, read ingredient labels
If losing weight and living healthy are your goals, don’t just stop at the amount of calories in food. Check out the ingredients too. See if you can spot any of the ingredients I’ve listed in today’s post. If you can, it’s time to ditch that product and never look back.
2. Skip zero calorie options
From this point forward, I hope that you’ll forgo anything labeled as zero calories or zero sugars. Whether that’s a drink, snack, or salad dressing, many of these foods are using unhealthy artificial sweeteners that could be leaving you worse off than when you started.
Avoid these bad boys at all costs to break the cycle of addiction.
3. Start making healthier swaps
Try making healthier swaps and slowly transition out of eating foods that contain the ingredients I’ve listed here.
So if potato chips are your thing, look for varieties that don’t contain MSG so you’re able to satisfy your salty craving without overdoing it. Of course, you’ll still need to practice portion control even if the chips don’t contain MSG.
4. Don’t start your day with flavored coffee
I’m sure many of you will hate me for this one, but I urge you to stop starting your day on the wrong foot by drinking coffee with added flavors and creamers. Swap out your morning brew for green tea instead.
By consuming sugar filled coffees early on, you’re only setting yourself up for a day filled with cravings and unhealthy snacking.
5. Avoid added sugars whenever possible
Don’t assume that your savory meal is free from sugars. Check out my list of foods that contain high amounts of sugar and avoid them at all costs. Some of them may surprise you.
6. Reach out to an expert
Ending your food addiction can be just as hard as quitting alcohol or drugs, and sometimes, you may need help from a professional. That’s okay. The sooner you can get help, the sooner you can start living healthier.
Find a local nutritionist or psychologist in your area who specializes in food addiction and let him know what foods you tend to crave more. He may be your best bet for getting help.
Now that you know a food addiction can happen to anyone at any time, I hope you’ll reconsider some of the choices you may be making. If you’re eating foods with additives such as MSG or HFCS, you could be putting much more at risk than just your waistline.
What surprised you the most about food addictions?
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