This nice summary is form last year and has most likely been debated on this
forum. The question is: have there been any practical/political implications
since then?

By the way, I remember reading long time ago about addiction to gluten from
grains. This substance was supposed to act as neuromodulator to make us more
quiet, which allegedly contributed to more peaceful (?) and sedentary life
during and after the neolithic transition. This is probably absurd, just
like many other addictions (shopping, gardening :), but you never know.

The issue of sugar and fat may have more to do with control and sense of
control than with direct harm to your health. You may want to know that one
of the main factors that contributed to the fall of Communism was sugar
rationing in Poland :)

Jaroslaw G. Wechowski

***
Is junk food addictive?
BUPA investigative news - 19 July 2003
written by Rachel Newcombe, reporter for BUPA's Health Information Team

http://www.bupa.co.uk/health_information/html/health_news/190703addic.html#

(...) A number of studies have been carried out in rats to look at processed
foods and addiction. Dr. Ann Kelley, professor of neuroscience at Wisconsin
University, together with Matthew Will, has been studying rats and diet for
a number of years. One study found that a high-fat diet appears to alter the
brain biochemistry in a similar way to drugs such as morphine. They say this
is due to the release of opioids - chemicals in the brain - that reduce the
feeling of being full.

According to Dr. Ann Kelley, rats "love the high-fat food and they eat and
eat. We found there are actually brain changes that are elicited by exposure
to a chronic high-fat diet." She believes that it is possible to compare the
findings about rats to humans; making it very plausible that humans can
become addicted to high-sugar and fatty foods.

"Those particular types of food - the fat and the sugar - are really the
culprits," she said. "They're responsible for the behavioural changes that
occur, the obesity and also the brain changes that look like addiction."

Bart G. Hoebel, a neuroscientist from Princeton University led a similar
study into sugar addiction, which was published in the journal Obesity
Research in June 2002. Again, rats were used and were gradually fed a diet
with increasing amounts of sugar. The more sugar given, the quicker the rats
ate it and when it was suddenly withdrawn from their food, they experienced
"addiction-type" reactions, such as chattering teeth, anxiety and shaking.

According to Hoebel, sugar triggers the production of the brain's natural
opioids. "We think that is a key to the addiction process," he said. "The
brain is getting addicted to its own opioids as it would to morphine or
heroin. Drugs give a bigger effect, but it is essentially the same process."

"The implication," he added, "is that some animals, and some people, can
become overly dependent on sweet food, particularly if they periodically
stop eating and then binge. This may relate to eating disorders such as
bulimia."

More studies in rats by Dr. Sarah Leibowitz, a neurobiologist at Rockefeller
University, New York, showed that exposure to fatty foods might reconfigure
the hormonal system to want more fat. Her studies have shown that rats fed
on a high-fat diet become more resistant to leptin - the hormone that stops
eating. At the same time, levels of galanin - a brain peptide that
stimulates eating and slows down energy expenditure - increases. She thinks
that early exposure to fatty food could predispose children to always
needing fatty products.

Recently newspapers reported that Dr. Martin Yeomans, a lecturer at the
School of Biological Sciences at the University of Sussex has studied humans
and the newspaper articles claimed that "high-fat foods stimulate pleasure
chemicals [opioids] in the brain". Details of the research were rather
sketchy and, unfortunately, he was unavailable for comment as he was
presenting a paper at the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behaviour's
annual meeting in Groningen, the Netherlands at the time this article was
being written.

However, a spokesperson from the university press office said, "The
impression we get is that the newspapers grossly simplified the research.
He's presenting some aspects of his research at the conference, but he's not
announcing that fatty foods are addictive and isn't announcing anything
new." (...)

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