Food Addiction: Craving the Truth About Food | Andrew Becker | TEDxUWGreenBay

I imagine everybody here works hard you know we all have these exhausting days where we get home just feeling very worn out but on these tiring days how many of you have tooken the edge off with a comfort food you know the foods that just make you feel better maybe it's cookies chips chocolate soda fast food you can all picture your favorite but why do these suits make us feel better you know isn't the point of eating to meet your clerk need so you you know have enough energy for the day but how many of you have been able to eat your favorite treat on a full stomach it's pretty easy even if you feel regret during every single bite you were very compelled to do it and you know you're probably gonna do it again the next time that it's served at least I will but have you ever tried doing this with a food you find really bland you can't I mean at least you don't want to why is this we all know we've all heard of the phrase this tastes so good it's like crack what a fight what if I told you that idea may not be so far off at least for some people I mean we all know we could we can become addicted to things things like cigarettes alcohol and painkillers what if I told you that food could be addictive at least for some people and it could significantly be contributing to the obesity epidemic in our modern society so currently in 2015 the CDC reported that in the United States 40% of adults are obese and 71 percent are overweight six hundred and thirty thousand Americans died of heart disease and one in three individuals I are either pre-diabetic or already have diabetes this has an incredible economic impact in our society in 2008 it was estimated that obesity related costs totaled a hundred and forty seven billion dollars 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 created the foods that cause us to ignore our full stomachs and eat until we can cure 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 percent 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 now i'm uses term a lot highly palatable food is food at a really high in salt sugar and fat and importantly these foods typically aren't really found in nature and so this yellow food addiction scale has been used in many studies to show that many aspects of food addiction mirrored drug addiction so for example in per Tori and colleagues found that when they image the brains of individuals that showed 3 or more symptoms of food addiction according to the Oh 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 Oh 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 drug stops taken and they go through withdrawal to many common symptoms of withdrawal include increased anxiety and loss of appetite researchers from upsala University in Sweden showed that when they gave obesity prone rats a diet really high in salt and fat and sugar and then they would through 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 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 consume these foods the reward that they got from these foods decreased over time driving the rats to over consume these foods and gain weight they developed a tolerance and so I know many of you are probably very skeptical to compare the power of certain drugs to food but did you know that when Lenoir and associates gave rats a choice between cocaine or sweetener called saccharin they actually prefer 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 than 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 thirsty 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 food that gave them high amounts of reward and foods that give you high amounts of reward typically refused that are really high in salt sugar and fat and so for comparison food like cake is most likely gonna 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 evolutionary advantage of this is it gave humans in an eight-way to prioritize foods that would be more advantageous for them we consume these highly palatable foods and think of your favorite you know mine 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 signaling 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 a ton on dinner so the part of the brain that makes and release this 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 or that really good feeling you get when you consume your favorite treat you can all picture it and you can all remember it it's the reason you don't 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 favorite restaurants we see pictures of food of your favorite foods and commercials on TV maybe when you thought of your favorite food during this talk and so evolutionarily not only did this pathway allow humans to it 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 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 until a pivotal study done by Johnson and Kenny took rats and fed them a highly palatable diet this diet consisted of bacon sausage chocolate cheesecake 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 reduce dopamine d2 receptors we tune 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 overconsumption of food eats the more weight gain which leads to further reductions in dopamine d2 receptors which seats the further decreases from a ward 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 is left to be uncover an answer 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 counselors doing research on their own asking for your support yet they can't stop isn't an 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 gonna 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 improves 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 individuals 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 would 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 gonna 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 percent of the population is overweight forty percent are obese one in three individuals either pre-diabetic will already have diabetes it's costing us and upwards of a hundred and seven billion dollars a year and health related costs and its projected to climb we've been asking each other for decades to just obtain more willpower any healthier on our own yet our health has not improved it's 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 [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 560,604

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Health, Body, Decision making, Food, Life, Obesity

Id: C0pLIjQG1q0

Length: 13min 54sec (834 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 05 2019