Tag: addiction
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U.S. Surgeon General Tackles Alcohol Misuse in Addiction Report
The U.S. Surgeon General has issued a landmark report intended “to address substance use disorders and the wider range of health problems and consequences related to alcohol and drug misuse in the United States.” Seeking “to galvanize the public, policymakers, and health care systems,” the report claims, among other things, that more than 25 percent…
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Swedish Study Highlights Potential Flaws in fMRI Findings
Swedish researchers have warned that the software packages used to analyze the results of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) contain flaws that increase the chance of a false positive by as much as 70 percent. Anders Eklund, “Cluster failure: Why fMRI inferences for spatial extent have inflated false-positive rates,” PNAS, June 2016. For more than…
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Food Addiction Beliefs Drive Support for Obesity-Related Initiatives
New research reportedly suggests that belief in food addiction translates into support for obesity-related policies, “even when accounting for the significant associations of age, gender and political party.” Erica Schulte, et al., “Belief in Food Addiction and Obesity-Related Policy Support,” PLoS One, January 2016. Relying on the responses of 200 individuals recruited through Amazon Mechanical…
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Researchers Discuss Tools for Assessing Food Addiction
A research article examining the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) and Palatable Motives Eating Scale (PEMS) has concluded that together these tools “offer a rigorous way to evaluate whether an addictive process contributes to certain eating disorders, such as obesity and binge eating.” Jose Manuel Lerma-Cabrera, et al., “Food addiction as a new piece of…
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Does Consumer Awareness of Food Addiction Affect Eating Behavior?
Raising concerns about how the media portrays the concept of food addiction, a new study questions whether endorsement of this model “may cause people to perceive a lack of control over eating which could promote unhealthy dietary behaviors.” Charlotte Hardman, et al., “‘Food Addiction is Real’: The effects of exposure to this message on self-diagnosed…
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Article Considers Food Addiction Under DSM-5 Criteria
An article examining food addiction in light of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) has concluded that the latest edition’s new criteria for substance use disorders (SUDs) “may be valuable for food addiction research, even if some of those symptoms may rarely be endorsed by participants exhibiting addiction-like eating.” Adrian Meule and Ashley Gearhardt,…
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Recent Research Links “Mood, Food and Obesity”
A review of recent research focused on food consumption and mood regulation has reported that complex biological factors engage both the peripheral and central nervous system “in a bi-directional manner linking food intake, mood, and obesity.” Minati Singh, “Mood, Food and Obesity,” Frontiers in Psychology, September 2014. Summarizing human and animal studies, the article addresses…
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Researchers Examine Impulsive Behavior and Food Addiction
A recent report published in the journal Appetite has allegedly concluded that “the same kinds of impulsive behavior that lead some people to abuse alcohol and other drugs may also be an important contributor to an unhealthy relationship with food.” Cara Murphy, et al., “Interrelationships among impulsive personality traits, food addiction, and Body Mass Index,”…