Is Food Addiction a Thing?

The "food addiction" conversation is a controversial one.

When it comes to research, I have learned that you can pretty much find evidence for anything you want on either side of an argument, because research is biased and flawed and no single study can speak for the million shades of gray that exist among human experience.

Today, I'm going to talk about food addiction from the angle of a human being who has personally operated like a food addict, been treated as a food addict, and come out on the other side. This is the only true experience I know to be true.

Food addiction theory supporters (like Mark Hyman, for example, the demi-god of Clean Eating) will say that food is addictive, and can cause binge eating, and that it lights up parts of the brain associated with addiction (PS - so does petting puppies and listening to music, but we don't tell ourselves we are addicted to that.).

According to Hyman and many wellness culture advocates, the abundance of processed, sugary foods in our society is behind the surge in "the obesity epidemic" and autoimmune disorders, and we must clean up our diets to free ourselves.

I bought into this theory for a long time.

I cleaned up my diet. There was nothing processed in my house for many years. I did not eat any sugar. I waited to stop being a food addict.

Instead, I binged like crazy on clean foods.

I binged on cauliflower rice and almond flour pancakes and avocado "nice" cream. I binged to levels of fury that matched any binge I'd ever experienced eating processed foods.

Processed food, then, could not be the only culprit. I was bingeing on "clean" foods when no processed foods existed in my diet.

But my therapist, an eating disorder specialist, confirmed the belief that I was a food addict because I behaved like one. I needed "fixes" every few days, at least. I was ok in the absence of food but not in the presence of it. I couldn't have a little without having a lot. I planned my life around getting it or avoiding it. I thought about it all the time. I turned to it in emotional distress, and despite my rational mind, I couldn't stop eating it en masse.

Every sign pointed to me being a food addict.

But I do not believe in food addiction, because this no longer pertains to my experience, and I still eat food. I didn't have to eliminate it, avoid it, or control it to stop eating it. I have ZERO feelings of addiction when I eat (even when I am eating the processed foods that are supposed to fuel it).

The feelings of addiction I had for almost 25 years disappeared over the course of one year, which was the same year I started allowing food without restrictions. It was the same year I stopped "should"ing myself to death, the same year I addressed the emotions pushing me towards control and self-flagellation.

That's no coincidence.

I do agree that there is an abundance of "palatable foods" (this is the term frequently used to describe processed foods like Doritos and Fritos and blizzards and PopTarts) that incites our neurological wiring to seek out more and more food. Our survival depended on getting food in a time when there were no supermarkets or drive-throughs, so our brains now experience pleasure and reward-activation when we eat.

Food addiction theory says that sugar doubles down on this reward response, which is why so many people have trouble with binge eating.

But if that were true, then we (as a human race) would all be binge eaters. We would all eat ice cream and never be able to stop eating ice cream. No one would be able to eat sugar and stop eating sugar, and we know that this is not the case, even if it is true for some of us.

Maybe the people who struggle to stop eating, the people who eat ice cream and keep eating ice cream, are also the same people who have restricted and judged sugar.

While sugary, palatable foods are in fact enticing and delicious, is their very demonization the thing that might be fueling a physiological and psychological response that directs us back to it?

If sugar is withheld (even in theory), maybe the brain freaks out because it operates on glucose.

There is credibility to the argument that palatable foods are convenient and readily available in ways that human behavior is susceptible to,and these foods do usually contain carbs and sugar. 

Eating only carbs and sugar will ultimately not make us feel good, so if we are in the habit of doing only what is convenient, we may find ourselves in a cycle of eating these foods and staying stuck in a loop of these foods.

But this is more an issue of habit, of living in a world that is too fast-paced to cook meals at home or pause long enough to make a meal that includes a wider variety of food groups.

This is a social issue, in my opinion.

It is not made better by the fact that we are also in a hurry to avoid our emotions, and our impulsivity will ask us to turn to easy food in an effort to numb, reward, or distract ourselves from ourselves.

STILL -- it is not a food addiction. It is a behavior addiction.

Food has become so demonized as a weakness that we use it as a value system within which we can express rebellion, seek reward, and numb out. The food itself is our drug of choice because it is shamed and restricted, thereby making it more enticing. We've made meaning out of food, so speaking through it becomes more powerful.

When I actively fought diet culture and allowed food to exist in my life without shame, I disrupted the value-system of food as "bad" and my biology had no reason to seek it out like an addict.

The reason I felt like I was addicted was because my all-or-nothing, bad vs good mindset made me feel like eating a chocolate chip cookie was opening a floodgate, so I would eat the entire package of cookies and keep going. This was not because the cookies were addictive, but because I saw cookies as "bad," which set off a domino effect of psychology that made me go all-in.

I see this as clear as day.

I saw this in my own life, and I see this with my clients.

I can read all the articles in the world, for or against food addiction theory, and it will always come back to what I know from experience. I behaved like a food addict, I felt like a food addict, and I wasn’t a food addict.

A disordered relationship with food does not an addiction make.

JOURNAL PROMPTS:

• Do you believe you are a food addict? If so, what makes you feel this way? What other reasons might exist to explain this?

• In what ways might the addiction theory help you feel less responsible for rejecting diet culture? In other words, is it easier to believe you’re addicted so you can eliminate food groups?

• Do you have a good/bad mentality around food? How does this fuel your tendency to start eating and not feel able to stop?