Scientists: Junk Food Just As Addicting As Heroin

According to a recent peer-reviewed study by the independent and not-for-profit Scripps Research group, humans can't help craving potato chips because the brain responds to junk food in the same way it does to heroin.

According to the study:

Junk food elicits addictive behavior in rats similar to the behaviors of rats addicted to heroin, a new study finds. Pleasure centers in the brains of rats addicted to high-fat, high-calorie diets became less responsive as the binging wore on, making the rats consume more and more food. The results, presented October 20 at the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting, may help explain the changes in the brain that lead people to overeat.

“This is the most complete evidence to date that suggests obesity and drug addiction have common neurobiological underpinnings,” says study coauthor Paul Johnson of the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Fla.

Though that's certainly terrifying, the most damning result of the study was what the rats would go through in order to get the junk food to which they'd grown addicted:

To see how strong the drive to eat junk food was, the researchers exposed the rats to a foot shock when they ate the high-fat food. Rats that had not been constantly exposed to the junk food quickly stopped eating. But the foot shock didn’t faze rats accustomed to the junk food — they continued to eat, even though they knew the shock was coming.

[via Grist.]