Chartered Clinical and Health Psychologist

IT’S time for the World Health Organisation to recognise that certain foods – such as refined sugars, grains and ultraprocessed foods like fast foods and doughnuts – can be addictive, leading to misery for millions of people.

It is accepted some of us get addicted to alcohol, nicotine and other drugs and help is available. But what about food? We need to eat.

The problem isn’t real, whole foods, but highly processed sugars and flours and the combination of sugar, starch, fat and salt.

I lived to eat bread, pasta, cake and chocolate and once I started, I always overate.

It isn’t easy to avoid these foods in our culture.

Just as with alcohol, about 10% to 20% of adults will develop an addictive relationship with certain foods.

Until we recognise that processed foods are addictive, we will never solve the obesity and mental ill health epidemics in the UK and internationally.

Standard advice to eat less and move more has failed – we need a new way of looking at this issue.

Consumption of processed food is linked to a plethora of health problems, obesity, depression, type 2 diabetes and cancer.

There is plenty of evidence sugar acts in the brain like other addictive substances. So what’s the delay in recognising this disease?

Until the condition is recognised, treatment and prevention will not be funded.

There will be push back from processed food companies – it took decades for nicotine to be recognised as harmful.

This campaign will need the support of the Government, the healthcare professionals and the public.