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Addicted to Food, Hungry for Drugs

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Abstract

There is a growing consensus among neuroscientists that people can become addicted to food, and that at least some cases of obesity have addiction as their cause. By contrast, the rest of the world continues to see obesity as either a disease of the metabolism, or as a reckless case of self-harm. Among obesity researchers, there has been a lively debate on the issue of whether obesity ought to be considered a disease. Few researchers, however, have suggested that obesity is a disease in the same sense as addiction is usually claimed to be a disease—that is, a disease of behaviour with a neurological cause. In this piece, I review what is now a compelling body of evidence for food addiction, to establish that many or most cases of obesity have addiction at their foundation. I then argue that in spite of this, obesity ought not to be considered a neurobehavioural disease in the sense usually attributed to drug addiction. Given the link between addiction and obesity, this implies that the disease conception of addiction must be abandoned. I conclude by assessing some of the implications this move has for policy and ethics, with regard to both obesity and drug addiction.

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Notes

  1. Of course, though drug use itself is often criminalized, overeating is not, and people who commit crimes in service of overeating will be relatively rare, since food is cheaper and more abundant than drugs are. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to presume that some overeaters have committed crimes in service of their appetite.

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  1. University Center for Human Values, Princeton University, 5 Ivy Lane, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA

    Bennett Foddy

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  1. Bennett Foddy
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Foddy, B. Addicted to Food, Hungry for Drugs. Neuroethics 4, 79–89 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-010-9069-1

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