{"id":486145,"date":"2010-03-28T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-29T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:consumerfreedom.com:\/\/aa8591f9d992fc0c8599940ffabdaada"},"modified":"2010-03-28T20:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-29T00:00:00","slug":"potato-chips-heroin-yeah-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/486145","title":{"rendered":"Potato Chips = Heroin? Yeah, Right."},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t“Junk food could be addictive 'like heroin',” screams one news headline<\/a> today above a story describing a new study in the journal Nature Neuroscience<\/em>. Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in Florida found that rats fed high-fat diets exhibited “addiction” symptoms, lost control, and overate. Get ready for the hyperbole.<\/p>\n

\n\tCommon use of the term “addiction” has changed from describing a physical<\/em> dependence on a substance (like hard drugs), to a psychological<\/em> dependence. That’s one reason comparing fried chicken and french fries to cocaine and heroin is pure exaggeration. Here’s how DrugFree.org explains withdrawal symptoms<\/a> that heroin users frequently experience:<\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t[Withdrawal] produces drug craving, restlessness, muscle and bone pain, insomnia, diarrhea and vomiting, cold flashes with goose bumps ("cold turkey"), kicking movements ("kicking the habit"), and other symptoms … Sudden withdrawal by heavily dependent users who are in poor health can be fatal.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n\tDoes going one day without a cookie or a slice of pizza give anyone the shakes? We're skeptical.<\/p>\n

\n\tFood can certainly be “irresistible.” But it’s possible to have a psychological <\/em>addiction to just about anything. A certain song. The cute guy or girl you see in class. Your Blackberry. The human mind works in mysterious ways.<\/p>\n

\n\tFood is physically addictive in the general sense that you need to eat or you’ll die. But fulfilling hunger pangs is hardly a bad thing. It seems that delicious food would obviously be more appealing<\/em> than food that tastes bland. Along those lines, Andrew Brown at London’s Daily Telegraph<\/em> makes an interesting point<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\tIt strikes me as a waste of time to study food to find some “addictive” property it may have, as if this offers an answer to compulsive use. Surely for any substance that’s pleasurable, there’s a person in the world who’ll take it compulsively. What are you going to do – ban all pleasurable substances? Or make them very expensive?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n\tMaybe not ban, but certainly sue. Classifying certain food as “addictive” is a ploy already in use by some trial lawyers<\/a>. The latest “addiction” study is eerily similar to newspaper headlines seven years ago<\/a>. Back then, John “Sue the Bastards” Banzhaf<\/a> saw food “addiction” as the necessary hook for “obesity lawsuits” to succeed in court. Prove that food companies make an addicting product, the logic goes, and a super-sized payday awaits.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe should note that the implications of this latest research hurts one class of people the greatest: Those trying to lose weight. They’re essentially being told that it’s a Sisyphean task with no chance of success. But let’s face some common sense: People have more self-control than rats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Junk food could be addictive 'like heroin',” screams one news headline today above a story describing a new study in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in Florida found that rats fed high-fat diets exhibited “addiction” symptoms, lost control, and overate. Get ready for the hyperbole. Common use of the term “addiction” has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4054,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-486145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4054"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}