Transcript Junk food as addictive as drugs.final

Junk food as addictive as
drugs
Jakab Andreea
Lakatos Eszter
Romanciuc Luminita
CATB
-2011-
Definition
Junk foods are typically ready-to-eat
convenience foods containing high levels
of saturated fats, salt, or sugar, and little
or no fruit, vegetables, or dietary fiber;
junk foods thus have little or no health
benefits.
Adolescents attributed the following
characteristics to junk food: high in sugar,
fat and calories, bad for health, high in
additives, fattening, lacking nutritional
value.
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Examples:
Potato chips
Soft drinks
Hamburgers
Pizza
Candy
Snacks
Gum
Most sweet desserts
Food Addiction Principles
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We are focused to be addicted to food:
Taste is addicting;
Calories are addicting;
The arousal of senses is addicting;
Increased palatability of modern food is
close to food “crack”;
Drug addiction and food addiction are
virtually identical. Treatment needs to be
the same;
The more tasty food one eats the more
you need to satisfy the pleasure center!
“The appetizer effect”
• Snack Food is Arousing [Excitement]
-Increased attention to stimuli
• Snack Food is Pleasurable
-It reinforces behavior
• Snack Food is Filling
-Quickly takes care of negative effect, but
causes rebound eating!
-The satiety ratio was higher for snacks than
meals (short term)
• Feedback from eating (snap, crackle and
pop) enhances snack food reinforcement!
Similarities between junk food
and drugs
• Substance is taken in larger amount and
for longer period - a classic symptom by
people who habitually overeat;
• Persistent desire or repeated unsuccessful
attempts to quit - failed attempts to keep a
diet;
• Tolerance - you have to keep eating more
and more just to feel “normal” or not
experience withdrawal;
• Important
social,
occupational,
or
recreational activities given up or reduced patients who are overweight or obese;
• Much time/activity is spent to obtain, use,
or recover - those repeated attempts to
lose weight which take time.
Here are some of the scientific
findings confirming that food can,
indeed, be addictive:
• Sugar stimulates the brain’s reward centers
through the neurotransmitter dopamine exactly
like other addictive drugs;
• Brain imagining shows that high-sugar and highfat foods work just like heroin, opium, or
morphine in the brain;
• Foods high in fat and sweets stimulate the release
of the body’s own opioids (chemicals like
morphine) in the brain;
• Obese individuals continue to eat large amounts
of unhealthy foods despite severe social and
personal negative consequences, just like addicts
or alcoholics;
• Animals and humans experience “withdrawal”
when suddenly cut off from sugar, just like
addicts detoxifying from drugs;
• Just like drugs, after an initial period of
“enjoyment” of the food, the user no longer
consumes them to get high, but to feel normal.
Super Size and Ingestion
• Supersized Portions invoke the
supernormal stimulus rule where
scare and important environmental
stimuli, if exaggerated…will increase
our desire, and in this case, increase
our appetite.
Super Size Me Movie
It’s a documentary film about
this guy, (Morgan Spurlock),
who decides to make an
experiment in which he must
eat only McDonald’s food for
30 days. He is supposed to
eat super sizes if asked.
During the experiment he is
supervised by 3 doctors and a
nutritionist. After a few days
he doesn’t feel good ( he even
vomits), the final analyses
show that his liver becomes
toxic,
his
cholesterol
skyrockets, his libido sags,
he gets headaches and
becomes depressed.
Conclusions
• New and potentially explosive findings on
the biological effects of fast food suggest
that eating yourself into obesity
isn’t
simply down to a lack of self-control;
• "In some ways, you may have to view junk
foods the way alcoholics anonymous
views alcohol: one bite is too many, and a
thousand is not enough.“
Jack Challem
Bibliography
• “Adolescents, Views on Food and Nutrition”, I.
Mary
Story
and
Michael
D.
Resnick
http://www.milk.mb.ca/Teachers/Images_Docs/Ad
olescents'%20Views%20on%20Food%20and%20N
utrition.pdf
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_food
• http://www.technicalproductsinc.net/PDF%20files/
Why%20Human's%20Like%20Junk%20Food%20P
art%20Twov4.pdf
• http://drhyman.com/food-addiction-could-itexplain-why-70-percent-of-america-is-fat-2499/