nosh nook #167 - tuesday, november 3, 2009

scientists: junk food just as addicting as heroin (link)
11.2.09 - air america - by verena von pfetten

...so heroin's a pretty sweet drug, right? from what i hear, it sucks the life out of you, puts a bunch of holes in your arms & totally turns you into some sort of wiiliam burroughs type, but without the cool suit or hat or anything. if you haven't been able to be loyal to anything else in your life, believe you me, you'll be loyal to the H. oh that rush you'll get!...again & again & again. you'll be all like, "mmm junk" & then you'll notice that you've accidentally ashed on yourself again. it'll be totally selbyan.

apparently junk food is exactly the same as that or, according to air america, at least as addicting as that. as they report, "a recent peer-reviewed study by the independent and not-for-profit scripps research group" determined that rats who are addicted to heroin behave the same as those addicted to junk food. as if all the smack-addled rodents on our streets weren't a big enough problem, now researchers are getting them hooked on ho hos & bacon. awesome.

basically, they gave a bunch of rats a bunch of junk food & the more they got, the more they were all "squeak squeak" (gimme gimme). the researchers noticed that the "pleasure centers in the brains of rats addicted to high-fat, high-calorie diets became less responsive" over time, like would happen with heroin users. in fact, it got so bad with the rats that they didn't even care when the researchers would shock them because they were eating. oh researchers...is there anything you won't give rats? cigarettes? lottery tickets? attention? a treadmill? i wonder how many of those would cause heroin-like reactions. anyway, scripps...can't wait to see the results!