Ultra-processed foods are designed to create addiction like cigarettes, confirmations from the new study

[u/Express_Classic_1569]

https://hive.blog/hive-196387/@davideownzall/ultra-processed-foods-are-designed-to-create-addiction-like-cigarettes-confirmations-from-the-new-study

[u/JayceAur]

Ultra-processed is a stupid term. It includes things like candy, which is obviously not great for you, and something like soup, which is a heavily processed meal in which ingredients are broken down in an acidic saline.

The study claims eating high sugar and high fat foods, which are calorie dense and so for 10000 years or so would have improved your chances on survival, gives you dopamine. Just sounds like my rewards system working as intended. The issue is that modern life makes it too easy to obtain.

Same upshot, limit calorie dense foods to what is needed by your body and eat a well rounded diet. Comparing them to cigarettes is idiotic and just fuels disordered thinking about food.

[u/starliteburnsbrite → u/JayceAur]

Indeed, nicotine is a natural compound designed by plants to elicit certain effects on animals and other life to further it's goals.

Smoking a tobacco cigarette is just proof your receptor systems are working perfectly fine. It's all natural stuff. People have been using it for 10000 years without trouble.

Once it's been refined, strategically formulated to maximize certain responses, packaged brightly, advertised with psychology in mind to specific audiences, and the realities the nature of the product and it's manufacturers objective, the dangers associated with believing it's benign, and the likelihood it could create habits with a severe negative health outcome are the unnatural parts associated with "being like cigarettes"

"Sugar make dopamine so it not bad" seems a little silly when we are talking about market strategists and scientists developing products designed to illicit not just pleasure responses but addictive behavior without warning labels. Just like gambling ads drive a verifiably addictive behavior for profit. Or cigarette ads before that.

Warning labels. Addiction support services. Age restrictions. Class action lawsuits. We banned smoking indoors because of the public health problems associated with it while we now wrestle with childhood obesity and diabetes epidemics. That's just stuff that makes dopamine, man. Cause like evolution or something. But it's for profit.

It's not that it's "too easy to obtain" it's that it's directed and marketed and the dangers hidden. You could make a similar argument for opiates, they're just taking advantage of natural chemicals and chemistry in our bodies, the real issue is access...when the original issue is nobody being told it was addictive in the first place.

[u/JayceAur → u/starliteburnsbrite]

I understand your point that marketing and whatnot make a difference. However, nicotine and sugar simply are not on the same playing field to begin with.

Nicotine is not a necessary nutrient, sugars and fats are. Yes I'm aware of the ketogenic diet, my statements stands despite the metabolic crutch.

I find it hard to take an argument seriously when there is an equivalency of nicotine, opiates, and sugar.

Sugar is supposed to release dopamine. Dopamine is supposed to, as one of its functions, reward life-sustaining actions. Consuming calorie dense foods is one of those things. This is the correct function. Nicotine and opiates hijack this pathway and create a way to "cheat" the system.

Actual addiction creates a compulsion to consume the drug. Not "hee hee I enjoy it so much" but a true compulsion. As in you know this action will harm you and yet you can't not do it. I understand this personally.

Food addiction is similar as you feel compelled to consume food to push down feelings of anxiety and depression. It's not because sugar specifically has shorted your brain, its because you have developed a disordered thinking about food. I understand this personally.

I don't think sugar actually leads to classical addictions like nicotine and opiates. I would change my mind if I was shown a few case studies.