Today's episode explores whether certain foods can be addictive, with insight from Dr. David Kessler, former FDA Commissioner and author of "Diet, Drugs, and Dopamine." Monica and Dr. Kessler discuss the concept of food addiction, compulsive eating, and the brain's reward system.
Today's episode explores whether certain foods can be addictive, with insight from Dr. David Kessler, former FDA Commissioner and author of "Diet, Drugs, and Dopamine." Monica and Dr. Kessler discuss the concept of food addiction, compulsive eating, and the brain's reward system.
Transcript: https://nutrition-diva.simplecast.com/episodes/can-we-really-be-addicted-to-food-with-dr-david-kessler/transcript
References
Addictive Junk Food: A Simple Story for a Complex Problem - ConscienHealth
Chemical Complexity of Food and Implications for Therapeutics | New England Journal of Medicine
You know the feeling: You’re not hungry. But that bag of chips or pan of brownies is still calling your name—and the longer you try to ignore it, the louder it gets. Today, we’re exploring whether certain foods can actually be addictive—with insight from Dr. David Kessler, former FDA Commissioner and author of the new book Diet, Drugs, and Dopamine.
Welcome to the Nutrition Diva podcast, where we take a closer look at nutrition news, research, and trends so that you can feel more confident about what you eat. I’m your host, Monica Reinagel and today, we’re talking about the controversial topic of food addiction. Are certain foods literally addictive? Should we view–or treat–compulsive eating as an actual addiction?
Dr. David Kessler, former FDA Commissioner and author of the best-selling book The End of Overeating has just published a new book called Diet, Drugs, and Dopamine, and this topic of food addiction is a key theme in both books. I recently had the chance to sit down with Dr. Kessler for an extended conversation, and I’ll be sharing excerpts from that interview throughout this episode.
As I was preparing for that sit-down, I pulled up an article on food addiction that I wrote for Food and Nutrition Magazine back in 2013. Back then, I wrote:
“If food addiction is a real phenomenon, then drugs being developed to combat other addictions might one day be a potent weapon in the fight against obesity.”
Of course, it turned out to be exactly the opposite. Today, we have new drugs that have revolutionized obesity treatment and are now being looked at as a potential treatment for other kinds of addictions. I’m talking, of course, about the GLP-1 medications such as Wegovy, Ozempic, Zepbound, and others.
Dr. Kessler and I talked quite a bit about GLP-1s in our conversation–and I’m going to share some of that with you in a future episode. But, before we talk about treatments, I want to back up and really look at the question of food addiction itself. Is it scientifically valid? And maybe just as important: is it a helpful way of thinking about our relationship with food?
If we define addiction as a physiological dependence on a substance, then, technically, we’re all addicted to food. We can’t live without it. As a result, the brain has developed mechanisms which motivate us to seek food. And because food was not always as plentiful as it is today, we are extra motivated to seek food that contains a lot of calories. Here’s Dr. Kessler:
I mean, from an evolutionary perspective, we, I think we were all designed to focus on the most salient stimuli in our environment. And when there wasn't food around in order to survive, what did you have to focus on? What did your brain need to adapt to? Right? So that you would be able to survive and find that food and that energy dense food would capture attention.
But those same pathways that keep us interested enough in food to avoid starvation can be hijacked by other substances like nicotine and heroin. We may be so motivated to seek them out that we will continue to pursue them even when we know they are causing great harm.
That, in a nutshell, is addiction: a compulsion to pursue something even when we know it's hurting us, and the feeling that we have lost control. And this is how Dr. David Kessler experienced his own history of compulsive eating.
If you look at the definition of addiction and the components, there are three. There are the cues, right? You can be cued, there's a cue induced wanting. There is craving that preoccupation. And then I think there's relapse. All of a sudden it dawned on me why every time I lost weight did I gain it back? Well that's just simply relapse. Cause I mean, those circuits are there. So I don't think we can deny that those circuits are there. You, you know, you wanna call them the reward, uh, circuits. You wanna call them the addictive circuits.But I think we have to identify there is that pull, right?
Kessler argues that our environment has become saturated with products that have been deliberately engineered to hijack our brain’s reward system. Foods that differ in both kind and degree from anything that was available when those brain pathways originally evolved. Specifically, it’s the combination and concentration of sugar, salt, and fat that seems to be our undoing. And although we often think of these types of foods as ‘processed,’ Kessler is quick to point out that you can create the same combinations in your own kitchen.
You know, I think you can achieve these highly rewarding foods. I think we can make it in our own houses and kitchens. It's not just processing. It's really that fat on sugar, fat on salt, fat, sugar and salt that I think is driving it.
There is plenty of scientific evidence to support the idea that certain foods—or more accurately, certain combinations of nutrients—can produce addiction-like responses in the brain.
A good example are studies conducted by Bart Hoebel and Nicole Avena at Princeton University. In a series of experiments with rats, they found that when animals were given access to sugar water, they not only developed a preference for it over plain water, but they also exhibited behaviors that looked a lot like withdrawal when the sugar was taken away. The animals became anxious, experienced physical agitation, and consumed the sugar compulsively once it was restored. That’s one of the classic hallmarks of addiction.
Similarly, neuropharmacologist Paul Kenny, working at the Scripps Research Institute, demonstrated that rats given access to rich, highly palatable foods—things like sausage, cheesecake, and chocolate—would continue to eat those foods even when doing so caused them physical pain. Kenny trained the rats to associate a warning tone with an impending electric shock. Rats eating plain chow would quickly stop eating when they heard the cue. But the rats eating junk food? They kept going—despite knowing what was coming.
More recent studies have added some interesting nuances. Female mice are more prone to binging on sugar than males, and more susceptible to relapse. And stressed rats are more likely to gorge on hyper-palatable food than their less-stressed counterparts.
All of this suggests that, in some animals at least, the drive to consume highly palatable foods can override not only satiety signals, but also basic survival instincts. That sounds a lot like addiction. And while humans obviously aren’t rats, many people who struggle with compulsive eating describe the experience in very similar terms: a sense of urgency, preoccupation, loss of control, and continuing to eat despite negative consequences.
And Kessler describes this internal preoccupation or ‘food noise’ as one of the clearest signs that our reward circuitry is being activated.
What is that preoccupation? What is that food noise? I mean, that's just cue-induced wanting going off in your head, right? Why do I have those thoughts when I don't want to have those thoughts? There was maybe something in my past, at that moment, the time of day, location, certain stresses, certain feelings that set off those certain cues that in the past I associated with eating.
While the addiction analogy may resonate for a lot of people who have struggled with over-eating, critics argue that it oversimplifies a complex situation. Health policy expert and obesity advocate Ted Kyle argues that the idea of “addictive junk food” may be an appealing but oversimplified metaphor that doesn’t hold up to scientific or practical scrutiny.
A compelling story needs a villain and in this story of obesity and the health problems that come from it, that villain is the food industry…The enormously appealing narrative of addictive junk food glosses over a fundamental fact about food. The substance of the food we eat—whether it is whole and unprocessed or ultra-processed—is enormously complex.
As Kyle notes, food researchers have cataloged almost 140,000 different chemicals that are found in food. They’re not talking about additives and synthetic ingredients, either. They’re talking primarily about naturally occurring chemical compounds. Many (if not most) of these interact with the body in ways we don’t fully understand. In contrast, truly addictive drugs like heroin or nicotine are chemically simple and affect the brain in more predictable ways.
Even if the science on this is far from settled, many people find the food addiction model helpful from an emotional or psychological perspective. It can feel validating to have a biological explanation for behavior that’s often framed as a lack of willpower or personal failure. But there can also be unintended consequences. I asked Dr. Kessler about this:
You write quite candidly about your own experiences with I think what we could consider compulsive eating. And you are comfortable labeling that experience, that loss of control as food addiction. Clearly there are some parallels in the way our brains respond to hyper palatable foods, way they might respond to other substances or stimuli, but some of the approaches that I have seen that really lean into this idea of food addiction end up promoting behaviors that from the outside look a lot like disordered eating.
I know of an individual that embraced something called Bright Line Eating as a solution to her food addiction and has become so rigid and so extreme in her behavior around food that her family is starting to wonder, “do we need to stage an intervention here?” So do you see any downside or dangers to framing this phenomenon as addiction? Or how do we navigate that?
Sure. I think you've just said it brilliantly and just enormously wise in how you frame that. I understand there is a great resistance, especially among my eating disorder colleagues.You use the word food addiction and they can't go there for the reason that they are concerned that food addiction means abstinence and abstinence only can sometimes compound the problem and make it worse and drive further addiction.
This tension is one of the biggest challenges with using the addiction model to describe eating behavior. For some people, it helps them make sense of what they’ve experienced. For others, it can feel like a new label for the same old shame.
Of course, one of the things that GLP-1 medications seem to be especially good at is breaking the hold that food has on our brains—quieting that persistent food noise. Dr. Kessler has personal experience with this effect, and in an upcoming episode, we’ll explore the various theories about how these drugs work. We’re also going to talk about what role the food industry, regulators, and policymakers should—or can—play in fixing what’s wrong with our food system. As with the concept of food addiction, not everyone is on the same page.
But for now, let me try to sum up what we’ve been wrestling with so far.
Some researchers and clinicians—Dr. Kessler among them—believe that certain foods can act on the brain’s reward pathways in ways that closely resemble addiction. There’s scientific evidence that supports this view—particularly from animal research—but it’s far from conclusive. And the concept of food addiction remains controversial, both scientifically and clinically.
For some, it can lead to rigid, abstinence-based strategies that may end up doing more harm than good. But for others, even if the term ‘addiction’ doesn’t quite fit, framing compulsive eating as a biological response rather than a moral failing can be empowering. It can reduce shame and open the door to new approaches—including medications like GLP-1s.
Whether or not you buy into the food addiction concept, however, there’s little doubt that the combination of fat, salt, and sugar—especially in concentrated forms—can override many of our self-regulation systems. That understanding, too, can be empowering. There’s a strong case to be made for limiting our exposure to these types of foods—whether they come in a brightly colored package or out of our own ovens.
This is obviously not a simple story with a single answer. But I think it is a conversation worth having—and one I look forward to continuing in our next episodes. I hope you’ll join me for those.
Dr. Kessler’s new book Diet, Drugs, and Dopamine is available wherever you buy books.
If you have a comment or question about today’s episode, you can email me at nutrition@quickanddirtytips.com If you’d like to find out about having me speak at your next live or virtual event, you can learn more at wellnessworkshere.com
Nutrition Diva is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Steve Riekeberg is our audio engineer, Holly Hutchings is the Director of Podcasts, and Morgan Christianson heads up Podcast Operations & Advertising. We also get indispensable support from Nat Hoopes. Thanks to all of them and thanks to you for listening!