Source: www.independent.co.uk
UNITED KINGDOM, April 2010: Junk food may be addictive in the same way as heroin or cocaine, according to a study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, showing that laboratory rats will endure painful electric shocks to satisfy their craving for high-calorie snacks made from sausages, bacon and cheesecake.
The researchers found that rats offered junk food quickly became so attached to it that they would endure painful but harmless electric shocks to their feet in order to eat it. They would even prefer to starve themselves rather than eat the “salad bar option” of the typical rodent food eaten by rats that had never had junk food.
When the scientists analysed the brains of the junk-food rats they found that a key pleasure-reward system known to be involved in triggering drug addiction in humans was overstimulated, causing the animals to eat more and more food in order to enjoy the chemical “high” felt in their brains. “It presents the most thorough and compelling evidence that drug addiction and obesity are based on the same underlying neurobiological mechanisms,” said Professor Paul Kenny at the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida.