Tag: addiction
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New York Times Blog Offers “Food Addiction” Quiz
“Are you a food addict?,” asks a September 20, 2012, New York Times “Well” blog post featuring a “food addiction” quiz . Citing several food studies allegedly suggesting “that food and drug addiction have much in common, particularly in the way that both disrupt the parts of the brain involved in pleasure and self-control,” columnist…
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Treatment for Obesity Through Brain’s “Addiction” Center?
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reportedly approved the use by Ohio State University (OSU) investigators of brain pacemakers as an obesity treatment. Deep-brain stimulation has apparently been approved for use in the treatment of disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, tremor, dystonia, and severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, and OSU researchers and clinicians evidently made the…
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Brownell Co-Edits Book of Essays on Food and Addiction
Yale University Psychology Professor Kelly Brownell has published a collection of essays with co-editor Mark Gold, Food and Addiction: A Comprehensive Handbook, that, according to Amazon.com “brings scientific order to the issue of food and addiction, spanning multiple disciplines to create the foundation for what is a rapidly advancing field and to highlight needed advances…
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Commentary Explores Policy Impact of Food Addiction Model
Researchers with the University of Michigan and Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity have authored commentary in Biological Psychiatry about the policy implications of an addiction model for food. Ashley Gearhardt & Kelly Brownell, “Can Food and Addiction Change the Game?,” Biological Psychiatry, August 2012. Gearhardt and Brownell argue that scientific efforts…
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Health Advocacy Coalition Joins ACS Call for Surgeon General Report on Soft Drinks
Suggesting that soft drinks are associated with “addictive mechanisms,” a coalition of nearly 100 federal, state and local public health organizations and individuals have added their voices to the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network’s, urging the U.S. Surgeon General to “prepare a Report on the health effects of sugary drinks and to issue a…
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PLoS Medicine Kicks Off Series on “Big Food,” Calls for Investigation
The journal PLoS Medicine has published two articles and an editorial in a “major new series” on “Big Food” in this week’s issue, and will publish five additional related articles over the next two weeks. The editorial notes that the articles, focusing on “the role in health of Big Food, which we define as the…
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Tufts Researchers Advocate Reclassifying Obesity as Addictive Disorder
A recent analysis of scientific literature has argued in favor of reclassifying obesity as an addictive disorder based on criteria described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association, version IV, in part because such a reclassification would help initiate policy changes aimed at curbing “the obesity epidemic.”…
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“60 Minutes” Segment Claims Sugar Is Toxic, Addictive
Anti-sugar crusader Robert Lustig was among the scientists participating in an April 1, 2012, “60 Minutes” interview claiming that studies indicate that sugar is toxic, addictive and can lead to obesity, Type II diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. Lustig, an endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco, has written extensively about the topic, including…