BBC SCIENCE FOCUS MAGAZINE COLLECTION 47DIETWorld Health Organization, to a whopping
74 per cent of men and 64 per cent of women
in the UK by 2030.
But food addiction studies have generally
been conducted on animals, or been snapshot
studies in humans. And despite one support
group for overeaters having 6,000 members
in six countries, including the UK, there still
haven’t been any comprehensive scientific
reviews to study the issue. This is a problem
t hat D r H isha m Ziauddeen, a sen ior resea rc her
in food reward processing at the University of
Cambridge, feels undermines the idea of food
addiction as a medical condition.
“The evidence for thinking food might be
addictive, or that food addiction exists, is
actually fairly weak,” he says. “I wouldn’t say
it definitely does not exist. It’s quite possible,
given the breadth of symptoms that people with
eating disorders describe, that a small group of
people have problems with disordered eating
that look very much like an addiction, and
[they may] share the kinds of experiences that
people with alcohol and drug addictions do.”
But he remains unconvinced that the Yale
Food Addiction Scale could identify these
people, or conv i nce ‘doubters’ l i ke h i m. “People
who score very highly on the scale also score
very highly for some of the more conventional
eating disorders. So the scale is measuring
certain behaviours that we see with other
eating disorders – but it’s not actually capturing
something distinct,” he argues.
Some researchers go further, and say food
addiction is a potentially dangerous public
health message. Ian Macdonald, a professor
of metabolic physiology at the University of
Nottingham, feels this could be because it
is difficult to reconcile an addiction with
something that is essential to human life.
Things like alcohol and drugs are, essentially,
choices – eating is not.
“I don’t think the term ‘food addiction’ is
helpful, and I certainly don’t think using
the word ‘addiction’ in combination with
specific nutrients like fat and sugars, or foods
like chocolate, should be encouraged,” Prof
Macdonald says. “Everyone must eat to survive,
so an addiction has to be something much more
extreme than normal eating. It is not helpful 5
DIETBBC SCIENCE FOCUS MAGAZINE COLLECTION 47