A new study on lab rats shows that high-calorie food may be just as addictive as cocaine.
Rats given a strict diet of junk food turned fiends for the stuff, developing compulsive habits similar to those seen in cocaine and heroin addicts. The more junk the little guys ate, the fatter they got, and the more tolerance they built to the pleasure of bad food.
Those who watch The Wire know that once junkies get hooked, it takes more and more juice to get high. True to form, rats spun out on Twinkies have to eat more and more of the junk to feel its effects, chasing a sweet-tooth ghost. Even when scientists zapped their pudgy toes with electric prods, the lab rats went after their fatty fix like Pookie at the Carter. When the rats were given healthy alternatives, they showed signs of withdrawl and went on week-long hunger strikes to avoid choking down good, nutritious food.
Like cocaine, junk food overloads the pleasure centers of the rat brain. Unlike cocaine, the chances a rat on a Ho Ho bender will jack your car stereo are slim. Compulsive eating, however, remains just as dangerous to a rat’s health, and just as destructive to their lives. When rats in the lab went junkie, "their attention was solely focused on consuming food," says Dr. Paul Kenny, lead author of the study.
Bad food is addictive. This may be news to rats, but many of us have known it for years. As anyone with an employee kitchen can tell you, the only cure for the crash that follows little peanut butter cups is more little peanut butter cups.
Obese rats, however, are subject to a baked-in chemical system designed to keep their cravings up. The animals are immume to high-sheen, double-crust pizza commercials, but the ingredients alone in processed food cause rats to "eat unconsciously and unnecessarily," according to Dr. Gene-Jack Wang at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory.
While rats’ habits may not translate directly to humans, the new study indicates that compulsive eating is less about self-control and Betty Crocker than complex brain behavior. One day, when treatment options for food addiction gain parity with those of cocaine addiction, obese rats may find a way to get on the wagon—and will hopefully take us humans along.
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