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Junk food junkies

Chowing down on junk food makes rats act like heroin addicts.
By Jessica A. Knoblauch
Fri, Oct 23 2009 at 2:10 PM EST
Read more: FOOD, MENTAL HEALTH, RESEARCH & INNOVATION

Photo: ZUMA Press
Put down that cookie and read this.
 
According to a recent study presented at the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting in October, rats that are given unlimited amounts of junk food had similar addictive behaviors to rats addicted to heroin.
 
“This is the most complete evidence to date that suggests obesity and drug addiction have common neurobiological underpinnings,” explained study coauthor Paul Johnson of the Scripps Research Institute to ScienceNews.
 
The reason is that the pleasure centers in the brains of rats became less responsive as the rats continued to binge on high-fat, high-calorie foods. Much like heroin addicts, the rats had to consume more and more of the addictive substance just to get a sugar high.
 
“They lose control,” said coauthor Paul Kenny. “This is the hallmark of addiction.”
 
To see how this works, the researchers fed the rats either entirely healthy diets or entirely unhealthy diets. The junk food diets consisted of foods like bacon and cheesecake. 
 
Not surprisingly, the rats that ate the junk food diet soon developed compulsive eating habits and became obese.
 
What's surprising is that the addiction to junk food was so strong that the rats were willing to get shocked in the foot just to get more junk food. Talk about motivation!
 
Though the rats that didn’t get the junk food in the beginning quickly stopped eating the high-fat food once they got shocked, the foot shock didn’t faze rats already accustomed to the junk food. They just kept on eating, in spite of the oncoming shock.
 
“What we have are these core features of addiction, and these animals are hitting each one of these features,” Kenny explained.
 
Even weeks after the rats were off of the junk food diet, the researchers found that the “reward pathway deficits” still persisted, which shows just how difficult it is to give something up once you’ve become addicted to it in the past.
 
“It’s almost as if you break these things, it’s very, very hard to go back to the way things were before,” Kenny says.
 
Even when there was only a choice between healthy food and no food at all, the rats chose the no food option.
 
“They starve themselves for two weeks afterward,” Kenny said. “Their dietary preferences are dramatically shifted.”
 
Of course, the real significance of the study is not whether fat rats can become addicted to candy and cookies, but rather what the effects of eating these types of foods over the long term might have on the reward system.
 
“We might not see it when we look at the animal,” says obesity expert Ralph DiLeone of Yale University School of Medicine. “They might be a normal weight, but how they respond to food in the future may be permanently altered.”


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Comments(9)

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Posted By Todd29 - Sat, Jan 02 2010 at 2:52 PM EST

Change your lifestyle

“Being overweight sucked, but after reading your book, I lost 85 pounds! Words can’t express how good I feel!“ This is a comment which I recently received about the book Lose Weight Using Four Easy Steps which can be ordered through www.bbotw.com

Posted By edward - Mon, Dec 14 2009 at 4:21 AM EST

Junk food junkies

I find it ironic that I arrived at this page with an ad for Pfizer at the bottom - drug companies love us to be addicted to unhealthy lifestyles! If we cut out the sugar, tobacco, and heavy fats (e.g. animal products), we wouldn't have to pop so many pills throughout our lives (not just our old age).

Of course, if they're talking about chocolate, it is still pretty addicting, even *without* sugar...

Posted By Sandy - Sat, Nov 14 2009 at 8:58 AM EST

Time for real solutions

I think it will help to really analyze what this means in terms of controlling the obesity epidemic. I was originally against schools controlling foods that kids eat at school, thinking that this is parental domain, but this study may indicate that the availability of the foods is one aspect of the addiction. At least herion addicts dont have their "drug" on every counter in every store in America. This study if used properly could help us to find real solutions.

Posted By Sunny - Fri, Nov 06 2009 at 7:06 AM EST

Scary!

Incredibly scary research. To think that their brains are tricked into desiring starvation, rather than healthy food choices. Wow.

Posted By Jess - Fri, Oct 30 2009 at 10:08 AM EST

This article is worthless

Addiction is difficult enough to deal with. Pointless studies relating sugar-crazed rats, obesity and addicts does not deter addiction or ease the suffering of a person struggling with addiction. How did they differentiate a rat immitating a heroin addict compared to meth addict?

Posted By mollyjun - Thu, Nov 05 2009 at 6:42 PM EST

junkfood junkies

Helping addicts isn't the point of this study, you mouth-breathing fartsmear. It's to show that bad food can cause the same behavior to better understand how to help people, Obesity is an epidemic and not just because of stupid people like you who can't understand how to read an article or a food label. They obviously know how the brain behaves under the influence of both Heroin and Meth and chose the most appropriate ones. They're brain surgeons not worthless snatchbaskets like you.

Posted By Grey Garvin - Tue, Oct 27 2009 at 6:17 PM EST

So now they have two problems....

...,they're addicted to junk food....*and* they're rats.

Posted By cynte415 - Tue, Oct 27 2009 at 5:48 PM EST

agreed

The article didn't surprise me as much as the headline did. This is sort of rooted in our fast-food and highly processed products culture.

I remember watching "Surprise Me!" and there was a part when the main guy started feeling depressed when he couldn't have McDonald's. Really quite bizarre (in fact, in a course I'm taking we just covered the brain and reward systems). It's too bad that nowadays there are already examples of this type of addiction in children. No rats needed..... More

Posted By anonymark - Tue, Oct 27 2009 at 11:59 PM EST

"Surprise Me!"

i think you meant "Supersize me".

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