Here I am eating spoonfuls of Trader Joe’s Cookie Butter and trying to write this blog after I just finished an entire box of mac and cheese.

Something obviously needs to change, but I can’t stop wondering what makes this food so tasty?

Merriam Webster defines junk food as the following:

“food that is not good for your health because it contains high amounts of fat or sugar

food that is high in calories but low in nutritional content

something that is appealing or enjoyable but of little or no real value’

How can something that is bad for us taste so good?  I guess you could say that about a lot of things, but today I want to focus on junk food and whether or not it’s addicting.

Today, in the 21st century, junk food is everywhere.  WebMD explains “junk food has gone global” as it is all over the world.  Junk food is sold in grocery stores, gas stations, schools, hospitals, and it “usually looks very appealing.”

It didn’t take long for me to find an overwhelming amount of research that is consistent with the alternative hypothesis.  Most studies conclude junk food is addicting.

This Bloomberg article is extremely informative.  The 2011 article references 28 scientific studies on food addiction that were published that year.  Below is a quote from the article:

“The data is so overwhelming the field has to accept it,” said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “We are finding tremendous overlap between drugs in the brain and food in the brain.”

Junk food gives us a fix.  It tastes delicious while we eat, but it doesn’t make us “full”, so we eat more.  The article explains junk food stimulates pleasure which leads “people to consume greater quantities to maintain a constant state of pleasure.”

TIME Magazine published an article in 2014 that examined food addiction in kids.  It states the following:

“Highly processed foods can lead to classic signs of addiction like loss of control, tolerance, and withdrawal… That’s especially concerning in children because an addiction forged in a child’s early years could put the child at more serious risk for chronically unhealthy eating into adulthood.”

Kids brains aren’t fully developed and advertisers market to that.  Most junk food companies target children to get them hooked while their young.

Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign has been instrumental in the fight against childhood obesity.  She explains in her New York Times that they used scientific research as their basis to “revamp” school lunches, add more fresh-food retailers, and get healthy food into child care centers.

A second New York Times article reports “a 43% drop in the obesity rate among 2-5 year old children over the past decade.”

“So we know that when we rely on sound science, we can actually begin to turn the tide on childhood obesity.” ~ Michelle Obama

The science tells us junk food is addictive, and I’m sure junk food companies aren’t too happy about that.  This junk food concept practically mirrors the smoking one.  Smoking felt good and people got addicted.  People didn’t know there were consequences until they eventually showed it caused cancer and cancer kills people.  Junk food tastes good and people can get addicted.  People didn’t think there were consequences, but now we know it causes obesity.  Obesity, or complications from obesity, kills people.

There is enough evidence for me to conclude that junk food is addicting.  So from now on I will limit myself to one spoonful of cookie butter and share my mac and cheese with my roommate.