Do you ever wonder why those of us who are as fat as we are are as fat as we are? Yeah, me, too. And the answer to that question is even more complex than that question is worded.
Truthfully speaking, however, we do not really know the answer to the question of why we let ourselves get as fat as we do completely. Why we do what we do, both in general and concerning our eating habits, continues to vex us as much as a mystery inside a puzzle inside an enigma.
Almost nothing about obesity is easy to explain fully and completely with a high degree of certainty. Why? Because obesity, as a disease, has several causes for its onset, development, and persistence.
One theoretical cause of obesity scholars have recently advanced includes the idea that obesity results from food addiction behaviors. Some studies show a link between mood and dietary patterns including specific nutrients. The upshot of all this appears to be we eat highly palatable food because it both tastes good and makes us feel good.
Apparently, tasty food tastes so good and makes us feel so good that recent research also shows highly palatable and energy dense (high calorie) food may have addictive potential. People who chronically eat more of some foods in than they need despite knowing it is bad for them do so because they have lost control of their food behavior. In fact, research shows a 40% of obese people seeking bariatric surgery show signs of food addiction.
Alot of current research indicates there seems to be a potential relationship between food behavior and being fatter than one desires. In fact, the research seems to conclude highly palatable food may be as addictive as common drugs of abuse.
Why do we get addicted to eating tasty food to excess? Because somehow, someway, somewhere in our life our hedonic eating (eating more tasty food than we need just because we like it) started tickling a particular region of our pleasure centers in our brains called the nucleus accumbens, which makes us feel good, and we like to feel good, thus, we reinforce the behavior of overeating tasty foods.
We like the good feelings we get when our nucleus accumbens gets tickled from eating so much that it almost seems like we may be addicted to this hedonic eating of highly palatable food. Now, when we look at the actual structure of the nucleus accumbens in many fat people, it appears that fat people are more susceptible to this addictive reward-enforcing response to tasty food because they have fewer structures in their brains called D2 receptors, which process dopamine.
When you have fewer D2 receptors, you process less dopamine in your pleasure center, which means the excess dopamine then tickles your nucleus accumbens more and better and you reinforce the habit of eating tasty food more than regular weight people. And all this science seems to indicate that fat people continue to pursue this “eat-and-be-happy” cycle over and over again despite the negative social, financial and, health consequences that occur as a result of their being fat and getting fatter.
Despite scientifically learning all of this “food addiction” stuff, however, we must keep in mind that we don’t know a whole lot more than we do know about food addiction in obese people and there is no easy anti-food-abuse drug out there that we can take and immediately stop loving excess amounts of tasty food.
Not everyone exposed to palatable food environments develops obesity. Knowing the biological and/or behavioral motives or reasons why people eat highly palatable foods could help explain the susceptibility or resilience with respect to obesity. Thus, we need to continue to study why people begin to eat these kinds of food so we can design appropriate “personalized” treatments to lessen overeating and combat obesity.
The Palatable Motives Eating Scale (PEMS) discussed in an earlier post is a validated and robust scale to identify motivations for eating highly-palatable foods. The scale allows detecting motives for eating tasty food. Those motives include:
- Social (e.g., to celebrate a special occasion with friends),
- Coping (e.g., to forget about your problems),
- Reward enhancement (e.g., because it gives you a pleasant feeling) and
- Conformity (e.g., because your friends or family want you to eat or drink these foods or drinks).
So, it’s not just what you eat, but how, when, where, and with whom you eat that affects how much you eat.
All that being said, we have much more to do and discuss.