Like nicotine, hard to kick food habit
Q: I’m working hard to improve my eating habits, but I just can’t shake my craving for chips and cookies. Any tips? — Carey T., Kansas City, Missouri
A: It’s common for folks who are struggling with unhealthy eating habits to feel like it’s all their fault. And, of course, you have a personal responsibility for not exercising or eating endless meals of fast and fried foods. But there are powerful external forces at work, too.
We now know that big food companies’ processed foods are greatly responsible for the obesity epidemic. A study in Obesity hypothesizes that we all have a protein target we automatically try to satisfy, and if our diet is protein-shy and loaded with fats and processed carbs, we overeat to try to get to the desired protein intake.
Changing that pattern turns out to be tough since we also now understand that highly processed foods can be as addictive as nicotine.
A study published in
DR. ROIZEN
Addiction applied the criteria used to establish that tobacco was addictive to highly processed foods, and bingo! It turns out that those edibles also trigger compulsive use and cravings and the more you eat, the more you want, even when facing life-threatening diseases like diabetes and heart disease. Highly processed foods also cause changes in the brain that are as great as those nicotine triggers.
Why are highly processed foods addictive? The researchers say it’s because they rapidly deliver unnaturally high doses of fat and carbs, plus those foods contain many additional chemicals that the body cannot process easily.
Q: Do people really have to keep being worried about COVID-19 after they are boosted or have had COVID-19 already? — John Y., Akron, Ohio
A: If you’ve had COVID-19, whether you’re vaccinated and boosted or not, getting it again isn’t something to shrug off, especially if you had complications in various organ systems during your first bout or had long COVID-19.
According to a study in Nature Medicine, those first-infection experiences increase your risk for getting a complication from COVID-19 by two or three times. When you’re reinfected, you’re more likely to have “elevated risks for organ problems, diabetes, and issues with mental health, bones, muscles and nerves. You also have more than double the risk of death and a more than three times the risk of hospitalization compared with those who are infected with COVID just once.”