Junk Food Turns Rats Into Addicts
October 26th, 2009
I can’t have just one cookie. Before I kicked sugar January 12th, 2006, if I had one cookie, I would eat the whole box. Then, I would drive to the grocery store to buy some ice cream. On the way there, I would stop at Taco Bell and on the way home I would stop at Wendy’s. In short, I’m a sugar addict.
With the obesity crisis we face in this country, it’s amazing that anyone could be skeptical about our ability to become addicted to food. Americans often times don’t use common sense and frequently need scientists to tell them what to think before they believe anything. Luckily, scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida are on the job.
ScienceNews.org reports, “Junk food elicits addictive behavior in rats similar to the behaviors of rats addicted to heroin, a new study finds. Pleasure centers in the brains of rats addicted to high-fat, high-calorie diets became less responsive as the bingeing wore on, making the rats consume more and more food.”
Scientists fed one group of rats Ho Hos, bacon, and cheesecake, and another group standard high-nutrient chow. No surprise here, “Rats that ate the junk food soon developed compulsive eating habits and became obese.”
Researchers used electrical stimulation to activate reward centers in the rats brains. If they wanted more pleasure, they could run on a wheel. The more they ran, the more pleasure they got. Interestingly, the junk food rats ran more, which showed they needed more stimulation to feel good.
As the experiment unfolded, the junk food rats saw, “‘profound reductions’ in the senstitivity to their brains’ pleasure centers.’” As a result, they ate more and more to attain the same level of stimulation, much like drug addicts have to up their dosage to get the same effects.
After a while, pain couldn’t even stop the junk food rats.
“…the researchers exposed the rats to a foot shock when they ate the high-fat food. Rats that had not been constantly exposed to the junk food quickly stopped eating. But the foot shock didn’t faze rats accustomed to the junk food — they continued to eat, even though they knew the shock was coming.”
Perhaps the most fascinating part of the story comes when they tried to get the junk food rats to go back to a healthy diet.
“When the junk food was taken away and the rats had access only to nutritious chow (what Kenny calls the ’salad option’), the obese rats refused to eat. ‘They starve themselves for two weeks afterward,’ Kenny says. ‘Their dietary preferences are dramatically shifted.’”
So, the next time you’re trying to justify feeding your kids garbage because, “Oh, they’re young and can burn it off at that age,” remember you could be altering their dietary preferences forever and setting them up for a lifetime of struggle.
p.s. I believe the “high-fat” focus of this research is misguided. These findings speak much more to the addictive nature of the sugar in the food they were feeding the rats, particularly its affects on their brain chemistry. But, regardless of their focus, the outcome remains the same.
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October 29th, 2009 at 8:08 am
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