Food Addiction: Why We Can't Stop Eating

continuing here on the examiner podcast brought to you by the Physicians Committee this is the weight loss champion Chuck Carol and I am here with dr. Neal Barnard today's topic is a very important one one that more of us struggle with and I think we even recognize and that topic is food addiction welcome to the show dr. Barnard Thank You Chuck I was doing some research before we get going on this and it kind of shocked me that food addiction is this prevalent according to a NIH study that was done not too terribly long ago as many as seven percent of women and three percent of men are classified as food addicts I personally having been one could say well those numbers could be a little bit higher but overall I mean that's that's a pretty substantial portion of the population yeah and it really depends on how a person defines it it can be much much higher for example let's say we're not necessarily talking about a problematic addiction something gets you into trouble but something that's clearly addicting like a morning cup of coffee right how many Americans would would say you know I have one every morning are you addicted yeah of course you know and you know because it doesn't have any moral overtones people will readily agree right that's them and they know it's physical they know it's caffeine because they dragged out of bed and they haven't had their coffee and they feel withdrawal until they've had had their dose but the point I'm making is I think these numbers are low um I think that their addiction to foods is far more common than that if not even universal meaning that at some point in their lives people get into a Jag a rut a habit that has a physiological basis that has them eating that food that doesn't love them back and they're and they're having it every single day I'm out I mean we've talked about that on this show quite a bit is you know how woefully addicted I was to food and it was the same food every single day it was Boston Market for lunch it was taquitos at 7-eleven on the way home with two 32-ounce Gatorades thank you very much and then it was $20 worth of Taco for dinner and if I did not get those foods I turned into cranky pants you did not want to be around me and then longer I went without those foods they're stronger than withdrawal symptoms became I got to a point when I would be two or three days out I would start to sweat I would start to feel nauseous I would get really really angry to the point where as I've said on the show I've put my fist through a wall because I wasn't getting my fix and that's an addiction to food food not a drug food but you're pointing out something really really important it was a certain food that you had identified everyday and at the same time a day yeah in other addictions have cycles so you might love whatever it is in a person you know went out on a bender and they got totally drunk but that was completely out of character for them they hadn't done it before and they didn't drink for weeks afterwards that's not addiction that might have been a bad choice but not help them but it's not an addiction addictions are on a daily basis or even on a faster cycle than that a tobacco addiction right and nicotine is obviously addictive the cycle is faster you know so you got have a cigarette every certain kind of increment but with food it's very often a 24-hour kind of cycle it's a certain food and it's a certain kind of day so you weren't at Taco Bell at 9:00 a.m. it was it was a night I'm gonna say yeah it was a nighttime thing or for some people the refrigerator is a magnetic 8:30 and you know what you want or you're going to the very same store for the very same three chocolate bars you know every night or whatever it is specific food specific time and that is a sign and and because you see this so often that's why I think then I think that food addiction is much more common that is recognized you know researchers at Yale it's funny you talk about that researchers at Yale came out with a food addiction scale and one of the questions on there was asking people to rate whether or not they did this and that is you have a refrigerator full of every food Under the Sun but it doesn't contain the food that you want to eat at that certain day do you go out do you go out of your way ignore everything that's in the refrigerator and go to get your fix at that point for me it was absolutely yes they put a lot of weight on that particular question yes it's true and and there are others as well that relate to this do you feel that you've lost control are there certain foods where you eat enough and you're happy fine that's it that's not an addictive food it's one that brings you beyond the normal satiety and you're eating it for reasons other than being full just as you described with your own experience do you start hiding things or lying about it so you don't want people to detect what you've done I mean these are not unique to food but they're but they're common for addictions and and my message is let's demoralize it let's look at it just biologically I believe that the human the human brain is susceptible to addictions and that it's effectively ubiquitous right and there are companies working really hard to make sure they are triggering exactly that addiction so if it happens to you it's not that you had a bad childhood it's not that you necessarily have a genetic predisposition all you may and we should we should talk about that but you may not and people can fall into this really no matter who they are where they're from or how cast iron their will is before we talk about which foods are the most addictive you know what food properties kind of light up the brain let's talk about how that brain reacts and food addicts compare to those of a drug addict you know these studies that they've done are quite staggering and they say well if correct me if I'm wrong but the brain reacts very similarly with food addicts as it does with the drug addict we have some fundamental neural circuitry that's designed to reward us and what nature had in mind was not to reward you for a Snickers bar or a Taco Bell meal what nature was thinking of is we need a reward circuitry for let's say you find just a good healthy food source so that you will remember where you found it you'll you'll you'll key in on all the cognitive things about where it is and and remember to have it again because biologically that will support you right the same circuitry by the way is triggered when you find a receptive mate so these things sustain the individual and sustain the species it's a little humiliating to think we have circuitry like that raids but we didn't design the system we're stuck with it now that circuitry gets triggered okay it gets triggered by all kinds of things hot that that hi jacket know when when human beings evolved to have this circuitry and by the way animals have it too nobody had figured out how to ferment grains and to make beer liquor liquor beer wine but once we had that technology you suddenly discover you can feel not just good but you could feel better than anyone has ever felt because you're triggering that pleasure circuitry and what the circuitry does is one cell sends dopamine these little molecules of dopamine to the adjacent cell that sets up it propagates pleasure response that doesn't just feel good it does that but it also kind of sets a timer saying put this on repeat do this again mm-hmm do this again tomorrow same time okay right and dopamine does that so alcohol can do it obviously and then when people figured out how to make cocaine you know it's a leaf but somebody figured out how to how to extract cocaine tobacco with nicotine opiates heroin and others and no surprise it's also things that we ingest the week that we call food but that nature thought whatever it it's not necessarily food you take your sugar cane mm-hmm and you throw away all the fiber and all the pulp and you extract just the sucrose from it or sugar beets people can get hooked on sugar as well I don't think that that's an uncommon addiction you know go through any checkout line in any supermarket in this country and you will see a bevy of candy just staring right at you say grab me and and that's why I want to get away from this idea of addiction as being a terrible thing I don't mean to say it's helpful but I mean to say it's not a moral failing and if a person doesn't want to use the word addiction just call it a Jag or I got into a rut but the idea that person a is a sugar addict and person B isn't wait a minute like everybody can be or has been or will be a sugar addict point in their life because it's you it's ubiquitous it's wafted into our culture and gets mixed with things to make it more addicting like your sugar alone addictive right but you mix it with a little cocoa butter the fat sugar balance about 50/50 will cause the the dopamine neurons to say okay now we're on to something and and there are I believe like we'll just call them food scientists think tanks that work for these large restaurant corporations whose sole function is to figure out how to make people crave these items a little bit more how to get more of what it is that will trigger that response success for them is defined by what goes over the cash register so if something is scanned over the cash register and they are making money that is success how do you do that you can you can modify the fat sugar mixture of a candy bar you can modify this salt content of a bag of potato chips and you can modify these things to make them more or less addicting and that's what the companies are doing and they're also playing with with timing fourth meal and sizes because addictions have doses so a person starts out as a having occasional cigarette and occasion they work their way up and their doses a pack a day or my dose is a pack and a half and you find your dose you accelerate you stay at you dose and you're there so if if it's fast food at night there's a certain amount that you want every night and you tend to not go under and you tend to not go too much over that don't you you get there and so the scientists want to know what that is I want to package that for you to maximize their profit yeah that's yeah it's very interesting and and kind of scary science it is scary but but if people want to blame somebody stop blaming your parents or your upbringing or yourself or your weak will there are people working hard to addictive and they're gonna do it and and not only do they figure out what's going to be in the the food but they also make sure is dangled in front of you mm-hm there was a time when gas stations sold gasoline but now nowadays you go and you fill your car you can't pay for it without being confronted by every possible snack food that's there you can go into book stores and it's a cash register they've got these these same kinds of things it's because the manufacturers figured out ways to dangle their stuff in front of you and they'll do it on television they'll do it everywhere they can so sure they've even got TVs at the gas pump now you don't even have to go inside to the store I mean there's a fill-up on gasoline and oh by the way fill up on these chips fill up on this soda as well come inside we've got a great deal going for you we've touched on chocolate a little bit candy so sugar clearly one of the more addictive substances food wise what else should we be looking for well speaking of sugar you can take a baby day 1 of life and let's say we're gonna draw a blood sample from that baby we do a little heel stick we draw some blood put it in a you know tube send it to the lab the baby cries instead of doing that I'll take some sugar put it in maybe a teaspoon of sugar put it in a cup of water and dribble some of it into the baby's mouth with a little syringe then you do the heel stick the baby doesn't cry really or cries less and people have noticed this with with all kinds of things that are painful to the baby or would otherwise and they found that sugar acts as a little bit of a painkiller except if mother was a heroin addict sugar tends not to work so well the point here's here's why sugar on the tongue triggers the release of opiates in the brain in turn those opiates trigger the release of dopamine the pleasure chemical we were talking about right if the baby happened to have a heroin-addicted mom the baby was bathing in opiates for nine months and now is basically just in withdrawal the the babies in withdrawal Wow after birth after birth and the sugar is not going to really raise the opiate level in that brain to the point of to be very significant Wow so again the point is this is everyone right everyone can have this effect from sugar now with chocolate chocolate sweet chocolate has sugar added but a person who wants chocolate doesn't just want a box of domino sugar they specifically want chocolate because the chocolate adds first of all it's a mixture of some sugar and also the cocoa butter is enhanced it's not just it's not just the bean extract they actually increase the amount of cocoa butter because if you get the right mixture it's more addicting and more satisfying right there's a little bit of caffeine and chocolate there is a lot of theobromine if anybody has a dog and the vet said don't let your dog have chocolate because the chocolate can hurt the dog right what the vet is thinking of as theobromine in a human it's a stimulant in a dog it's such a stimulant it can be pain it can be fatal there are other compounds in chocolate too but these help us explain why a person who wants chocolate wants chocolate they don't just want something sweet right they don't want a hard candy they specifically want chocolate cuz that's an addiction interestingly enough you can take narcan the drug used for heroin yeah overdose yeah give it to a chocolate addict and then you give them a tray of chocolate by the way I don't mean a person who appreciates chocolate I mean a person who will be in John chocolate you pre treat them with narcan which is a drug that that effectively knocks it makes heroin or morphine or any other narcotic not be able to adhere to the mule receptors in the brain a chocolate addict will suddenly lose much of their interest in chocolate Wow and by the way this is not a treatment this is a you'd have to take it intravenously on your way into the 7-eleven this this is a it's a research tool okay where purses and I just like chocolate I just love the taste I like the mouthfeel fine let me give you some narcan and if your ingestion of that goes way down that's a sign it was doing something in the brain that we have now blocked what about a less processed form of chocolate say somebody puts just a scoop of cacao powder in a smoothie that they're making no added sugar the only sugars that they're getting would be from the natural fruit that are in that you're getting it to be closer closer to just a flavoring which in and of itself could have some opiate effect however what really kicks in the addictive aspect of it is the addition of sugar and the addition of fat the fat sugar mixtures are a big thing I was mentioning sugar before people like sugar but they like it usually mixed with fat hmm a donut cookies people think cookies they're carbs they're sugar look at the recipe of a cookie it's got shortening it's got butter the fat calories are usually higher than the sugar calories and in fact almost always but that fat sugar mixture is what really gets us hooked more than the sugar alone I would assume and this is just my own opinion or hypothesis I should say milk chocolate perhaps a little more addictive than dark chocolate because of the increased dairy quantity it could be two possibilities one is is yes just it does change the macro nutrient composition the other is dairy adds its own addictive component no we talked about this before the the the Kaizen CAS ein s ik a zine protein in milk breaks apart in your digestion and as it does so it releases opiate like chemicals there are lots of other amino acids that are released but but but as the casein to gests certain strings of three or four or five or six or seven amino acids little strings of beads if you will break out of the casein they go to the brain and they attach to exactly the same receptor that heroin would attach to Wow or morphine would attach to and in fact they're called kaizo morphine's Kaazing derived morphine like compounds we presume that they are there to calm down the calf a nursing calf mm-hmm gets milk mmm whatever nutrients milk may have and a little bit of feel-good for mom it's calming to the baby and and by the way the same is true in human milk there's case um orphans in human milk but when you turn milk into something that a person is drinking in the amounts that Americans do you get more kaizo more fans and when you turn milk into cheese the kasem orphans are concentrated and that makes sense because when I go back and I think about what it was that I used to eat I was never a chocoholic that was never my advice I was never a candy guy but you look at what I was eating those taquitos those trips to Taco Bell all of those items loaded with cheese loaded and I cannot explain why for one person it's gonna be cheese and for another person it's chocolate and for another person it's sugar the vet I don't know and even among let's say you take people where alcohol is their issue why for one person is it wine and another person it's liquor and another person is beer why those things happen I have no earthly idea why is it that one person gets hooked on menthol cigarettes and other person and regular cigarettes but what we do know is that the final common pathway is always the same yeah it's always dopamine it triggers dopamine and then the next day you borrow it all that dopamine it's now gone to you you don't have it anymore so you feel rotten until you can conjure up another dopamine hit to just feel halfway normal what about processed meat that's something that we talk about a lot here listen the king of all processed meats bacon why is bacon such an addictive thing everybody you know that's everything's better with bacon why well first of all it should be noted that when people have an addictive substance they don't do take alcohol they don't do a commercial saying buy our beer it makes you drunker it's it's gonna get you drunk really fast but honestly that's why people are buying it right of course by our cigarette it will give you that nicotine hit fast if it were honest if that's what they would say but what they do is they want to instead create an aura so the aura is our bottle of wine came from Tuscany and it was unbeatable grapes that look fabulous in the sunrise you know it covered with you yeah or our back when cigarette advertising was that was illegal back in my youth it was you're a cowboy yep or you're a cool jazz musician or whatever they always create an aura so that's true with food armies we have the mate what do they mean what they mean is I'm masculine I'm powerful now of course you might be you might have erectile dysfunction and be overweight and whatever but you're gonna have this image that surrounds the meat product with regard so-so bacon has worked very hard to cultivate the fact that it's not just muscles ripped out of a really unhappy pig despoiling the planet in making North Carolina look like just an environmental disaster and there there is everything bad about this product but they make it sound cool and it's addictive for a variety of reasons but to cut to the chase I mentioned narcan you can give narcan to Hank inject it into his arm and if he's a bacon addict he will eat less bacon really meaning that it's not just because he likes the taste it's because it's working on his brain it triggers the release of dopamine and you can quantify and by the way not just bacon but with other meats too but with bacon what do you have going for it you have meat we see this so you could see even with tuna a little bit but with bacon it's quite high in fat especially saturated fat which is also in chocolate but now a lot of salt goes at its salt-cured oh yeah so nobody takes bacon you know they don't want just some raw pork or something like they they want it cooked up greased up salted up cured and that's what they're gonna love the tragedy of all this I mean there's many tragedies what happens on the farms is horrible for the for the animals it's disgusting for the environment it's horrible for your health it's terrible but there was just a report that came out about two three days ago looking at cancers in people under the age of 50 unlike all the progress yeah slowly but surely making against cancer we are losing the battle on colorectal cancer and the reason is that bacon is a fad Wow and we have developed this nihilistic attitude that live it up it's wonderful let's go out to the breakfast place and just have it and treat our sons and daughters to it so that it's part of their life let's serve it in schools that serve it in hospitals the very hospital that will not give you cigarettes so they will not let you smoke they used to sell them they don't sell them anymore we'll sell you bacon despite the fact that it's a major contributor to the second leading cause of cancer death which is colorectal cancer you

Channel: Physicians Committee

Views: 144,104

Keywords: health, nutrition, plant-based, food addiction, Neal Barnard

Id: xFuSnKD8Kc8

Length: 22min 37sec (1357 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 21 2019