Research Shows Fat is Addicting

Currently in a research laboratory in New Zealand, a group of researchers are currently exploring the intriguing possibility that the consumption of fatty foods may not simply due to to preference, but perhaps linked to addiction. Their research has been published in the medical journal ‘Medical Hypotheses’ and has the possibility of radically changing the way we think about treating cases of obesity and other food disorders. The theory could certainly explain a number of modern phenomenon: including the concept of comfort food and the rise of obesity in the western world. Perhaps another link that could be made is the general ‘food searching’ behaviour which occurs when individuals are hungry. Dr. Simon Thornley who works in the research team at the Regional Public Health Service in Auckland suggests that one of the main indicators as to which foods could be more addictive than others lies in the Glycaemic Index, a ranking of carbohydrates that measures the effects that occurs on our blood sugar levels. He also discusses issues about automaticity which he says is “the sort of automatic nature of eating”. According to Thornley, “The food environment seems to determine people’s ability to eat. If sugary foods are around not surprisingly they seem to be eaten more frequently.”

Evidently such a theory seems relevant and almost common sense. Annually during the Christmas season, many households indulge themselves with turkey roasts, potatoes, fruit cakes and other foods with a high-fat content. Its no wonder that Christmas is a time when many individuals seem to pack on the kilos, and then subsequently fail to lose the weight in-spite of record New Year’s resolutions. Perhaps you could argue that the entire concept of celebration very much goes hand-in-hand with the consumption of ‘comfort foods’ in Westernised societies, with the indulgence which is associated during these events often assisting the addiction to these types of foods, and playing a major rule in the subsequent failure to overhaul their diets in the new year. While this concept may seem to make sense though, a lack of empirical evidence on the topic means that the race is on to conduct further research to determine whether this theory is valid.

While the idea that thinking of fat consumption as an addiction is quite interesting, don’t expect too many changes to how we treat weight problems just yet. Some people have linked this research to nicotine addiction since many parallels can be drawn between for example, people searching for food, as well as people hunting down drugs. Separate research are trying to find the so called ‘fat patch’ that could release chemicals to actively prevent the metabolism of high GI foods, but at the present time, the only reliable way to go about weight loss from a fatty foods perspective seems to be going cold turkey on it.