In this episode, you will learn if food addiction is really a "thing" and the truth behind this diet culture topic:

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Eating with Intention

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Is Food Addiction an actual thing?

Have you heard of experts telling people they are addicted to food? It’s actually kind of a scary thing when they phrase it that way, because, well, ya know, you have to food to live. So when we phrase it as an “addiction” it can lead to really disordered eating patterns because in our culture we equate addiction to things like alcohol and drugs and tobacco.

So if we examine the word addiction, it’s defined as “physically and mentally dependent on a particular substance, and unable to stop taking it without incurring adverse effects” given that definition, don’t you think we are all food addicts? Hell, that means my cat is a food addict too, right?

The thing is, we are all physically dependent on food, what the caveat is, and where a lot of disordered eating, that gets classified in some realms as “addicted” comes into play is with the emotional dependency.

What does science say about food addiction? How did we get here?

You may be wondering, if calling disordered eating a “food addiction” isn’t what we need to be doing, how did it get started...Public health concerns about the escalating obesity “epidemic” and its health “consequences,” coupled with a growing understanding of the features of addiction across its myriad forms, prompted some in the science and medical communities to explore the possibility that certain eating behaviors might best be explained through the lens of addiction. Researchers are curious about the food addiction possibility because the brain region (and neurochemicals, like dopamine) involved with substance abuse, are also implicated in overeating.

The problem is, for the most part, research has been done through the tainted lens of diet culture. However, there are many reasons, other than addiction, that can explain the rewarding aspect of eating.

When it comes to food, what looks like an addiction is actually a lack of tools, we find that food is used as a tool to deal with emotions, good or bad ones, and as a distraction, making it outwardly look (especially through the lens of diet culture) like an addiction. It's actually a lack of tools. The solution for this in our diet culture-ridden world is to deprive ourselves of a certain food, or broadly of calories in general, and when that doesn’t work, we then have the guilt of failure which leads back to using food (or any other substance) as a tool to feel better or avoid the emotional baggage.

There are actually many explanations that don’t involve food as an addictive substance that can explain why dopamine is triggered in the human body. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, which is a chemical released by neurons (nerve cells) to send signals to other nerve cells. The brain includes several distinct dopamine pathways, one of which plays a major role in the motivational component of reward-motivated behavior.

Thinking of that same brain-reward system, one of the reasons dopamine is triggered in the body it that it helps with human survival. Dopamine, which triggers both a pleasurable feeling and motivation behavior,