I think I see food addiction in the same way you see nicotine addiction. We're pretty much predisposed to a food addiction, as it's sort of necessary to live. Nicotine's slightly different, as use of it starts a NEW addiction, which definitely isn't beneficial in any way to our survival.
For instance, we've developed drives to force us to eat food, and then we've also developed tolerance so that once we've reached satiety, we stop. Unfortunately, as us humans are pretty smart, we can completely ignore that, and just keep eating anyway. Would I call that an addiction? No, not really. I think I'd just call that being retarded.
I guess it's just the fact that food is only a psychological addiction, because the physical one is already in place. Similarly, marijuana is considered by many to be "psychologically addictive", although it possesses no physical addiction. In the same way, you could consider Starcraft or Warcraft "psychologically addictive", but that doesn't make them a drug.
Also, I don't think I would blame cocaine on a cocaine addict's problem. For anyone that chronically uses drugs, I definitely see it still coming back to them at fault, addictive or not. Because, funny story, had you've chosen NOT to experiment (and most likely came back to "experiment" many more times after that), you would NOT have become addicted. Simple as that.
tbh doesn't eating also stimulate pleasure centres in the brain?
Anyways, we're preprogrammed for nicotine too. It's the same sort of principal. We have those receptors in our brain already, we just start stimulating them more then we need to, then eventually it's like oh snap we need more. Over eating is similar, we need to eat, but then we start eating when we don't need to, all of a sudden our set point is higher then it should be and people feel the need to eat more.
Yes, it does, that's what dopamine was designed for in the first place. Telling us when things are good for us, aka food/sex (keep having offspring). It's just that drugs of abuse, well, abuse dopamine.
And, I don't know if eating works or not in the way you're talking about... I know it takes 7 minutes or something before your stomach realizes there's food in it, and stops making you feel hungry. So, if you give someone a huge plate of food, they could eat pretty much anything they wanted in that 7 minutes... but that just has to do with bigger portions, not the fact we eat more than we need to.
Aka, you're still going to get full from the same amount, it doesn't increase depending on how much you ate last time. That's how I thought it worked, anyway. I may be wrong.
Not sure of the accuracy, but according to our psych book and psych prof. the human body has a set point which is your average weight that the body attempts to maintain. It's why say if you ate a few extra ounces more then you needed each day your body doesn't gain dozens of pounds over time unless there's also a major change in lifestyle. Think about how much your food intake varies and how similar most people's weight stays. It's because your body purposely limits or expends energy to maintain that set point. Apparently though once you start overeating and you get obese your set point rises, hence why it's such a battle for people to drop weight. They need to hold it off until their homeostasis or set point switches back to a normal weight.
That's just what my book says though. I call half bullshit on it though. I never found it hard to be like 'GD, I eat too much crap and don't exercise enough.' I'm not in amazing shape, but def, better then I used to be and it was no great struggle. Just a matter of being like, 'oh, yea.. don't want to die.'
For instance, we've developed drives to force us to eat food, and then we've also developed tolerance so that once we've reached satiety, we stop. Unfortunately, as us humans are pretty smart, we can completely ignore that, and just keep eating anyway. Would I call that an addiction? No, not really. I think I'd just call that being retarded.
I guess it's just the fact that food is only a psychological addiction, because the physical one is already in place. Similarly, marijuana is considered by many to be "psychologically addictive", although it possesses no physical addiction. In the same way, you could consider Starcraft or Warcraft "psychologically addictive", but that doesn't make them a drug.
Also, I don't think I would blame cocaine on a cocaine addict's problem. For anyone that chronically uses drugs, I definitely see it still coming back to them at fault, addictive or not. Because, funny story, had you've chosen NOT to experiment (and most likely came back to "experiment" many more times after that), you would NOT have become addicted. Simple as that.
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Anyways, we're preprogrammed for nicotine too. It's the same sort of principal. We have those receptors in our brain already, we just start stimulating them more then we need to, then eventually it's like oh snap we need more. Over eating is similar, we need to eat, but then we start eating when we don't need to, all of a sudden our set point is higher then it should be and people feel the need to eat more.
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And, I don't know if eating works or not in the way you're talking about... I know it takes 7 minutes or something before your stomach realizes there's food in it, and stops making you feel hungry. So, if you give someone a huge plate of food, they could eat pretty much anything they wanted in that 7 minutes... but that just has to do with bigger portions, not the fact we eat more than we need to.
Aka, you're still going to get full from the same amount, it doesn't increase depending on how much you ate last time. That's how I thought it worked, anyway. I may be wrong.
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That's just what my book says though. I call half bullshit on it though. I never found it hard to be like 'GD, I eat too much crap and don't exercise enough.' I'm not in amazing shape, but def, better then I used to be and it was no great struggle. Just a matter of being like, 'oh, yea.. don't want to die.'
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