Translated material
Fatal pizza
Has it happened to you to overeat with some specific dish? You always want it, are ready to spend a lot of time and effort to get this product, and its consumption captures you so much that your professional and social activity suffers from this? Do you know that this product is harmful, but still eat it, and you need to eat more and more to achieve the desired effect? Do you have symptoms of cancellation if it is impossible to eat your favorite treat?
If you answered in the affirmative at least three questions, you have a food addiction. It has much in common with other dependencies, including the loss of control over consumption, the inability to stop, despite the desire to do this, and the need to constantly increase the dose. When a person eats products on which he is dependent, the same areas of the brain are activated in him as with other addictive disorders (striped body and medial orbitophontal bark).
The problem of food addiction is explored by Dr. Ashley Gearhardt for several years. In 2009, she and her colleagues from Yale University developed a Yale food dependence scale, which allows to evaluate the degree of addiction to certain products, and now continues to work at the University of Michigan [1].
Many drugs receive from natural raw materials, but it does not cause dependence, but a product of its processing: not grapes, but wine; Not a poppy, but opium. As a result of such processing, the concentration of the addictive substance increases significantly, it is rapidly absorbed, its content in the blood increases sharply and affects the nervous system.
Researchers suggested that not all products cause food dependence, but only that have undergone serious technological processing: not culinary, but technological. The resulting provision has several distinctive features. First of all, it includes purified carbohydrates: thin grinding flour and refined sugar, and in a large concentration. Refined sugar is quickly absorbed and causes a jump in the concentration of glucose in the blood. Technological processing removes substances that slow down sugar absorption - water, proteins and fiber, and increases the glycemic load of the product (GN). The higher it is, the stronger such food increases the level of glucose and insulin in the blood.
The second feature of processed products is added fats. Their concentration is also high, and most importantly, they are adjacent to carbohydrates. Natural products are either fat (nuts) or sweet (bananas), and the processed ones contain both components, and in the concentration so high that it can cause addiction. Both added fats and refined sugars are quickly absorbed, sugar acts on an opioid system, suppressing the alarm and causing pleasure, and fat to dopamine, which makes food tastier. Thus, refined sugar and added fats play the role of addictive substances. A sweet banana, devoid of fat and containing fiber, will not cause addiction, although many love bananas very much, and oily sweet chocolate can cause.
All these reasoning was confirmed by numerous rates on rats. Much less is known about food dependence, but researchers have the right to expect that processed products cause it, like animals. It remains to find out which ones. For this, Ashley Gerhardt and her colleagues compiled a kind of rating of “problematic” 35 common products with varying degrees of processing and the size of the GN.
The study consisted of two stages. The first was attended by 120 students of different nationalities who, first of all, answered the questions of the Yale scale of food dependence (dependence found dependence in 6.7% of the subjects, that is, in eight people). Then the students showed pictures with the image of a pair of products (cookies or apple, cheisburger or water) and asked for an answer which of these products will more likely cause the problems discussed in the questionnaire, similar to this: “Over time, I found that I need to eat more and more certain products to achieve the desired result, for example, reduce negative emotions or enjoy it.” At the end of the test, each product was compared with all other products from the list.
As a result, the researchers received a list that showed how often a particular dish can cause addiction. In the top ten, redesigned products with the addition of fat and refined carbohydrates were found: chocolate, ice cream, fried potatoes, pizza, cookies, chips, cake, popcorn with butter, cheeseburger and muffins. In the last five brown rice, water, cucumbers, broccoli and beans without sauce.
Maybe someone is especially drawn to the Salt? But no, the content of sodium in the products did not affect their rating.
Scientists suggested that it is the content of fat and glycemic load that determine the additiveness of the product. This hypothesis was confirmed by the second stage of research conducted with a more diverse sample. It was attended by 384 people from 18 to 64 years old, who also answered questions from the Yale scale (food dependence was found in 10.2% of the subjects). Then each participant evaluated each of the 35 products on a seven -bill scale (1 point - does not cause the slightest problem, 7 points - causes emergency problems). As a result, the researchers not only received a rating of the problematicness of the products, but also found out what features of the subjects (gender, age, body mass index, the presence of food dependence) affect their preferences.
The second list, like the first, is headed by fat products with high GN. The first ten pizza, chocolate, chips, cookies, ice cream, fries, cheeseburger, sweet soda (the only non -fat product), cake, cheese. Popcorn moved to 14th place, Muffins to the 18th. In the last five brown rice, apples, beans, carrots and cucumbers.
Researchers came to the conclusion that people more often get used to products with high GN. This indicator affects the food dependence stronger than the sugar content or purified carbohydrates in itself, since it determines not only the amount of carbohydrates, but also the speed of their absorption. The substance becomes narcotic when the high dose of the agent and its rapid absorption increase the addictive potential. Products with high GN stimulate brain centers associated with reinforcement, such as a striped body, which is accustomed to the product and craving for it. Fat content also contributes to the development of food dependence. The more it is, the higher the likelihood that the product will cause addiction. Products with a low carbohydrate content (nuts and eggs) or fat (bananas) take places in the second ten of this rating.
Food disorders and food dependence are more often found in people with a high body weight index. Another risk factor is a tendency to food dependence on the Yale scale. Such personalities sometimes have an unhealthy addiction to products with a slight content of fat and medium GN, for most people safe. In men, more often than in women, there is dependence on unprocessed products: bacon, cheese, steaks and nuts.
Here is such a story. Journalists removed one word from it - cheese! Still: an average person at 16 kg per year eats him! There is cheese in pizza and in cheesburgers, and even enters the second list in the tenth number. And men cannot without him at all. There is something mystical in this product. It is no coincidence that Ben Gann, planted by Flint on a uninhabited island and dreaming of a normal human food for three years, was most yearning for cheese. The sensation of cheese dependence was spread by many media, for example [2]. For clarifications, journalists turned to the first author of the article by graduate student Erica Schulte.
Erica and other consultants said that the cheese contains the milk protein of beta-cazein, and in concentrated form. In the process of digestion, it breaks down. Forming short peptides of the casomorphines. Casomorphins are well absorbed into the blood and interact with opioid receptors. How can not fall dependent!
Now the expression "scientists in shock" is popular. Apparently, Ashley Gerhardt, reading all these notes, experienced something similar. The correspondent of Scint News, who turned to her for comments, she said that she was horrified [3].
Yes, pizza occupies the first lines in products that can cause food dependence. However, the main addictive agents of pizza are not cheese, but thin grinding flour, fat and high glycemic load. Cheese can really give great pleasure to lovers, it stimulates the reward system in the brain, but there is no reason to compare it with cocaine. They remembered the cheese because of the Casomorphins; However, their effect was investigated on rats, introducing the drug into the body of the animal body or directly into the brain. Under such conditions, casomorphins are really associated with opioid receptors, however, consumed with food, they do not cause addiction in rats. So there is no reason to shift the cheese, eat calmly. Ashley Gerhardt continues to study food addiction, improves the Yale scale. Recently, she challenged an alternative theory, according to which people get used not to individual products, but to the very process of food, so their dependence is not food, but behavioral [4]. Of course, behavior features play a certain role in the development of food dependence. However, behavioral deviations are characteristic of all people dependent on any substances. And since the addictism does not develop for any product, it is still not behavioral, but food.
Studies by Ashley Gerhardt and her colleagues allow people to approach their nutrition more meaningfully. The state, according to the researcher, should also realize the problem of food dependence and take appropriate measures. Perhaps not far from the time when the inscription appears on the boxes with pizza: “Caution! Causes addiction! "
Natalia Reznik
1. Schulte EM, Avena Nm, Gearhardt An Which Foods May Be Addictive? The Roles of Processing, Fat Content, and GlyCemic Load // 2015. 10 (2): E0117959.
3. Sciencenews.org/blog/scicurious/no-cheze-not-just-crack
4. Schulte EM, Potenza Mn, Gearhardt an A Commentary on the "Eating Addict. Ion »Versus" Food Addiction "Perspectives on Addictive-Like Food Consumption // Appetite. 2016. DOI: 10.1016/J.Appet 2016.10.033.