Unlike some other influencers, who specialize in only one type, Big Food not only produces the substance but helps to form and mold the behavior.

If the food business is a game, we the customers are the pawns. If it is a war, we the consumers are the casualties.

Is food addictive in the same sense as heroin and cocaine? Or in some other way? Or in more than one way? And if so, what are we supposed to do about it?

A particularly revelatory and pertinent story was that of Howard Moskowitz, a psychologist with wizard-like capabilities in product optimization.

The Big Food industry was catching heat and tried to figure out how to deal with the emerging obesity epidemic. But very little came of it.

We’ve been looking at food addiction as substance addiction, or as a behavioral addiction. But the possibilities do not end at two.

Because we are human, some see food addiction as a societal problem, others don’t see the connection between FA and childhood obesity.

Some research shows that substance abuse is a question of personal vulnerability, whether it is physically based on genetic heritage or is psychological.

Veteran addicts had not become users in their own familiar environments, so many recovered when they came home. Let’s think about it in light of food addiction?

More recent research with different methods has shown deficiencies in research that concluded that all rats and people who use addictive drugs become addicted.

“Addiction” is quite the loaded term, and once the discussion turns to addiction in terms of food and in relation to obesity, watch out!

In reviewing the history of beliefs and research about food addiction, we can see how the significance of an animal experiment might be misconstrued.

For decades, the debate has persisted over the validity of “food addiction” as a thing that medical science should deal with or even acknowledge.

Many patients, post bariatric surgery, develop alcoholism “serious enough to warrant in-patient treatment.”

Amy and Tammy Slaton, morbidly obese adult sisters who won an eating contest and a TV reality show contract, are back.

Science has been looking at different angles, including brain activity, genetics, similarity to opioid addiction, cross addiction, and overactive hormones.

Is food abuse the same as food dependence? And doesn’t that phrase sound slightly absurd? After all, 100% of humans are food-dependent.

Is there such a thing as food addiction? Is it a substance addiction or a behavioral addiction, or a combination of the two? Or something else entirely?

It has been a while since addiction was discussed here, so the object of the next few posts is to catch up with ideas that people have had about the subject.

The struggle for recognition was not of the virus itself, of course, but of its insidious and invidious long-term effects.

A recent study of COVID-19 patients ages 12-17 found that of all underlying conditions, obesity was found to be the most common.

To arrive at understanding that what you eat affects everything, a lot, is one of the cruelest of life’s lessons.

Ultra-processed foods can be identified in a commercial setting by the lengthy lists of ingredients on the packaging, and often by the packaging itself.

Xand and Chris van Tulleken, the very media-savvy twin doctors with weight issues, have a complicated history regarding both obesity and each other.

Xand and Chris van Tulleken are identical twins, both doctors, so how did it get to where they were 42 years old and Xand outweighed Chris by 30 pounds?

Doctors and twins Xand van Tulleken and Chris van Tulleken produce a podcast and videos about their various excursions into the field of obesity prevention.

The public has become used to hearing about the unwisdom of the whole food-tampering enterprise, and also accustomed to not doing much about it.

The food industry engineers the natural flavor out and then adds chemicals supposed to taste like natural flavors. It sounds crazy because it is.

According to some people, this is a category of fad diet and ought to be shunned. According to others, it is the ultimate in self-care wisdom.

Should we eat potatoes at all? Is it ever okay to follow an all-potato diet? No doubt, experts will continue to wrangle over the essential truths of potatoes.