Highly processed foods should be reclassified as drugs because they are as addictive and harmful as cigarettes, scientists say.
Researchers say products like donuts, sugary cereal and pizza meet the official criteria that established cigarettes as drugs in the 1990s.
These include causing compulsive use and mood-altering effects on the brain, and having addictive or craving-inducing properties or ingredients.
“I’m no longer food”
Ultra-processed foods — which also includes things like juices, chips, pastries, and sweets — contain large amounts of unnatural flavors, preservatives, and sweeteners.
These properties give them their delicious flavor, but they also make them high in calories, fat, sugar or salt, which increases the risk of obesity and other chronic diseases.
Researchers led by Dr. Ashley Gearhardt, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, said for Daily mail that these foods are more like a drug because of how far they are in taste and texture from natural foods.
“They’re industrially produced substances designed to deliver sugar and fat,” said Dr. Alexandra DiFeliceantonio, a health behavior research professor at Virginia Tech University.
“They’re not food anymore. It’s these products that have been designed very well to deliver addictive substances.”
The researchers want to limit the marketing of these foods to children, just as nicotine advertising cannot be directed at children. But they didn’t call for a total age ban.
America’s obesity crisis has been largely linked to the prevalence of ultra-processed foods. These foods are believed to make up about 50 percent of the American diet.
As a result, approximately 70% of Americans are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with 40% classified as obese.
Dr. Gearhardt warned that even people with a healthy weight are at risk of developing long-term problems from consuming junk food.
Constantly increasing blood sugar levels through the consumption of sugary foods can also lead to diabetes.
Now experts are calling for them to be regulated in a similar way to nicotine.
Three dependency parameters
In 1988, Dr. Charles Everett Koop, who served as US surgeon general to President Ronald Reagan, released a 600-page report on nicotine addiction.
At the time, more than half of American adults smoked cigarettes, but the long-term impact of smoking was relatively unknown.
Dr. Koop used three key parameters, compulsive use, mood alteration and reinforcement, to establish that nicotine is an addictive substance.
Last year, scientists determined that the craving for cigarettes experienced by many chronic smokers is also a fourth pillar DEPENDENCE.
Dr. Gearhardt and Dr. DiFeliceantonio applied the standards used to determine that nicotine is an addictive substance even for highly processed foods.
The first was compulsive overuse, which they described as a person wanting to eat those foods even when they are aware of how unhealthy they are.
“It’s hard for them to do that even when they know it’s going to kill them.”
He blamed the content on fats and sugars of food to trigger an addictive response in the brain.
While more research on unhealthy foods is needed to determine exactly how they impact the brain, she believes the rate at which the body processes them may play a role.
