Pressman, P., Clemens, R. A., & Rodriguez, H. A. (2015). Food Addiction: Clinical Reality or Mythology. The American Journal of Medicine, 128
(11), 1165-1166. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjmed.2015.05.046
From the research article’s abstract: “In the last 5 years, there has been an astonishing interest in the notion of food “addiction.” Medline has seen a sevenfold increase in the number of papers indexed by the term “food addiction” since 2008.1 The ideology of food addiction posits that foods that are eaten frequently become substances of abuse and could cause health problems for the consumer if the affected individual suddenly discontinued the food in question. This “withdrawal” is often described as the resulting “hangover,” and craving is equated with a reaction that could only be mitigated by eating a further portion of the “addictive food.” The persistence and escalating intensity of the public debate about the potentially addictive quality of sugar may be one of the most remarkable social phenomena of the new millennium.