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      Which Foods May Be Addictive? The Roles of Processing, Fat Content, and Glycemic Load

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      1 , 2 , 1 , *
      PLoS ONE
      Public Library of Science

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          Abstract

          Objectives

          We propose that highly processed foods share pharmacokinetic properties (e.g. concentrated dose, rapid rate of absorption) with drugs of abuse, due to the addition of fat and/or refined carbohydrates and the rapid rate the refined carbohydrates are absorbed into the system, indicated by glycemic load (GL). The current study provides preliminary evidence for the foods and food attributes implicated in addictive-like eating.

          Design

          Cross-sectional.

          Setting

          University (Study One) and community (Study Two).

          Participants

          120 undergraduates participated in Study One and 384 participants recruited through Amazon MTurk participated in Study Two.

          Measurements

          In Study One, participants ( n = 120) completed the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) followed by a forced-choice task to indicate which foods, out of 35 foods varying in nutritional composition, were most associated with addictive-like eating behaviors. Using the same 35 foods, Study Two utilized hierarchical linear modeling to investigate which food attributes (e.g., fat grams) were related to addictive-like eating behavior (at level one) and explored the influence of individual differences for this association (at level two).

          Results

          In Study One, processed foods, higher in fat and GL, were most frequently associated with addictive-like eating behaviors. In Study Two, processing was a large, positive predictor for whether a food was associated with problematic, addictive-like eating behaviors. BMI and YFAS symptom count were small-to-moderate, positive predictors for this association. In a separate model, fat and GL were large, positive predictors of problematic food ratings. YFAS symptom count was a small, positive predictor of the relationship between GL and food ratings.

          Conclusion

          The current study provides preliminary evidence that not all foods are equally implicated in addictive-like eating behavior, and highly processed foods, which may share characteristics with drugs of abuse (e.g. high dose, rapid rate of absorption) appear to be particularly associated with “food addiction.”

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          Most cited references61

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          Evaluating Online Labor Markets for Experimental Research: Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk

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            Addiction-like reward dysfunction and compulsive eating in obese rats: Role for dopamine D2 receptors

            We found that development of obesity was coupled with the emergence of a progressively worsening brain reward deficit. Similar changes in reward homeostasis induced by cocaine or heroin is considered a critical trigger in the transition from casual to compulsive drug-taking. Accordingly, we detected compulsive-like feeding behavior in obese but not lean rats, measured as palatable food consumption that was resistant to disruption by an aversive conditioned stimulus. Striatal dopamine D2 receptors (D2R) were downregulated in obese rats, similar to previous reports in human drug addicts. Moreover, lentivirus-mediated knockdown of striatal D2R rapidly accelerated the development of addiction-like reward deficits and the onset of compulsive-like food seeking in rats with extended access to palatable high-fat food. These data demonstrate that overconsumption of palatable food triggers addiction-like neuroadaptive responses in brain reward circuitries and drives the development of compulsive eating. Common hedonic mechanisms may therefore underlie obesity and drug addiction.
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              Preliminary validation of the Yale Food Addiction Scale.

              Previous research has found similarities between addiction to psychoactive substances and excessive food consumption. Further exploration is needed to evaluate the concept of "food addiction," as there is currently a lack of psychometrically validated measurement tools in this area. The current study represents a preliminary exploration of the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS), designed to identify those exhibiting signs of addiction towards certain types of foods (e.g., high fat and high sugar). Survey data were collected from 353 respondents from a stratified random sample of young adults. In addition to the YFAS, the survey assessed eating pathology, alcohol consumption and other health behaviors. The YFAS exhibited adequate internal reliability, and showed good convergent validity with measures of similar constructs and good discriminant validity relative to related but dissimilar constructs. Additionally, the YFAS predicted binge-eating behavior above and beyond existing measures of eating pathology, demonstrating incremental validity. The YFAS is a sound tool for identifying eating patterns that are similar to behaviors seen in classic areas of addiction. Further evaluation of the scale is needed, especially due to a low response rate of 24.5% and a non-clinical sample, but confirmation of the reliability and validity of the scale has the potential to facilitate empirical research on the concept of "food addiction".
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Academic Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                18 February 2015
                2015
                : 10
                : 2
                : e0117959
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States of America
                [2 ]Department of Medicine, New York Obesity Research Center, Mount Sinai- St. Luke’s Hospital, New York, New York, United States of America
                Colorado State University, UNITED STATES
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Conceived and designed the experiments: ES AG. Performed the experiments: ES AG. Analyzed the data: ES AG. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: NA AG. Wrote the paper: ES NA AG.

                Article
                PONE-D-14-44034
                10.1371/journal.pone.0117959
                4334652
                25692302
                181763b9-6dce-48a7-b556-636d0d3a6c17
                Copyright @ 2015

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

                History
                : 30 September 2014
                : 26 December 2014
                Page count
                Figures: 0, Tables: 3, Pages: 18
                Funding
                This work was supported by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) DA-03123 (NA); URL: http://www.drugabuse.gov. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Custom metadata
                The authors confirm that all data necessary to replicate the current findings are publicly available through the University of Michigan’s institutional data repository, Deep Blue ( http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/109750).

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