Are ultra -free food addictive? – The Up-to-date York Times

Over the past decade, the research has revealed a clear pattern: people tend to overeat ultrasound of ultrasound food. This may be one of the reasons why they are associated with weight gain and obesity.

What is not clear Why We are so susceptible to overeating them.

Dr. Robert Califf, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, offered one hypothesis on A Hearing of the Senate in December: “These foods are probably addictive,” he said, adding that they can act on the same brain paths related to opioids and other drugs.

Ashley Gearhardt, an addiction researcher at the University of Michigan, eight years ago such a concept was highly controversial. She described on stage at a scientific conference in 2017 for suggesting that some ultrasaded food can act as addictive substances. Now, she said, more researchers began to reach this idea.

But the main question remains: how will you prove it?

AND Research published on TuesdayThe largest of its kind, had a gigantic swing in this puzzle. But his results caused more questions than answers. Here’s what we know – and we don’t know – so far.

Can food give you a mattical hit dopamine?

One of the ways in which scientists study addiction is to look at the level of the brain of the neurotransmitter dopamine – a natural signal that helps you learn to look for what you need to survive. When you eat, your brain releases chemicals, said Dana Compact, a cognitive neuronauk at the McGill University in Montreal. If it is food that you know and like, she said, just thinking about it or seeing can cause dopamine growth, reminding that it is a good source of fuel and more exposing you to eat more.

Addicting drugs consume this survival system, causing a greater boost in dopamine and encouraging people to employ them many times, said Dr. Compact.

Researchers wondered if ultra -dadded foods – especially those high in fat and sugar – cause a similarly prevailing dopamine reaction, which suggests that they can be addictive in the same way as drugs. Earlier tests of rodents and People supported this ideaBut human experiments were very small.

In the modern study, scientists from the National Institutes of Health have measured how the brains of people reacted to drinking high -fat ultra -collapsed milk cocktail.

They discovered that while more than half of the participants had a slight boost in dopamine after drinking a cocktail, the rest fell or has no change. On average, they came to the conclusion that scientists were not a statistical difference in the levels of brain dopamine before and after drinking shock.

The authors wrote that this result is contrary to the idea, that ultra -free food flows in, causing an boost in dopamine in the brain similar to addictive drugs.

But there is an critical reservation: the study measured the levels of brain dopamine using PET scans, which are widely used in drug addiction studies. These scans can not measure tiny dopamine changes very well; It is likely that milk cocktails caused dopamine reactions in more participants, and the scans simply could not detect them, Kevin Hall and Valerie Darcey, the main authors of the study, who are nutritional scientists and metabolisms in Nih, wrote in a statement for The Times.

A few drugs, such as cocaine and amphetamines, cause dramatic rapes in dopamin, which are obvious in PET scans, but for others, such as others nicotine Or opioidsDopamine’s answers are smaller and not always detectable, said Alexandra Difeliiceantonio, a neuronauna from Virginia Tech, who was not involved in the examination.

Dopamine “respondents” can be considered ultra -free foods particularly pleasant.

Dr. Compact was most interested in the participants of the modern study who had a slight boost in dopamine after drinking cocktails. These “respondents”, as the authors of the research called them, assessed cocktails as more pleasant and said that they wanted more of them compared to other participants.

A few days after scanning the brain, scientists discovered that “respondents” ate almost twice as many chips! Lunch cookies in the form of a buffet as other participants.

It follows previous research nicotine AND opioidsDr. Gearhardt said. People who have measurable dopamine increases after drug employ usually consider them more pleasant and want them more than those who do not do it.

External researchers praised a modern study for its size and rigor. But they and the leading authors said that although the main result seems to suggest that ultra -inside food may not be addictive, this is not the end of the history of this question. “It is simply more complicated than we initially thought,” the authors of the study wrote.

There is controversy around the word “addictive”.

Questions about food addiction are a “very gigantic minefield,” said Dr. Compact.

She said that in a sense the food must be addictive. The fact that we are attracted by food with a high content of calories, sugars and fats, provided our survival as a species. “There is nothing wrong with that,” she said.

The problem, added Dr. Compact, consists in the fact that this survival mechanism may not serve us well in an environment full of aromatic, heavily sold and comfortable ultrasound foods. It ranges to call the category as addictive, because there are probably many other complicated reasons why we are susceptible to overeating, in the fact that they are often packed with calories and can be consumed faster than minimally processed products.

On the other hand, Dr. Difeliiceantonio easily says that some ultra -felic foods can be addictive, citing the way they stimulate the “rewards” system of the brain in a strengthened way, similar to addictive drugs. They are designed for this, she said, with tempting flavors and often High levels of fat and sugar which are quickly absorbed in the intestines.

While brain measurements, such as PET scans used in a modern study, are one of the ways to understand addiction, added Dr. Dificecentonio, they cannot ultimately prove whether the substance is addictive.

Dr. Gearhardt said that in the past, when scientists determined that substances such as nicotine and opioids were addictive, analyzed how these substances influenced people’s behavior.

“It wasn’t a magical brain examination that convinced people” Cigarettes were addictiveShe said. The point was that people could not stop smoking, even after learning that it was harmful to their health. “It was a nail in a casket,” said Dr. Gearhardt.

Dr Gearhardt and her colleagues have developed the assessment criteria for whether people have symptoms of food addiction (such as hunger or restriction problems), which are parallel for addicts. Massive 2021 review From the research in which this record was used, it showed that 14 percent of around 19,000 people assessed the criteria for food addiction.

At the end of the day, Dr. Gearhardt said that we should believe people when they say they are addicted to ultras. “The evidence is in pudding,” she said. “People want to stop but can’t.”