Food addiction: Barrier to losing weight fast

Food addiction is more real than you think.  A study by Yale graduate students reported in the Archives of General Psychiatry that seeing certain food can activate the same areas of the brain as a drug addict sees a drug. This may help explain why it is often hard to lose weight and to combat obesity.

The study makes use of the functional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) to study areas of the brains that are activated amongst 48 women when they were given a chocolate milkshake or a tasteless liquid and the women were of varying weight and BMI. Milkshake seems to trigger the anterior cingulate cortex and the medial orbitofrontal cortex of the brain. These same areas have been previously studied in drug addicts. The activities in the brain were even higher in women who were assessed as having some element of eating addition.

They Paper also said that food advertising and easily available palatable food makes it difficult for healthy diet and mayy play a role in obesity.