This is your brain on junk food ...

I read an interesting news brief the other day that explains a lot.

It turns out that junk food causes changes in brain chemistry similar to those of cocaine, according to a recent study. Here's a link to the NPR blog article that discusses the study:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/03/junk_food_jones_is_wired_in_yo.html

And here's a link to the Scripps Research Institute press release:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-03/sri-ssc032310.php

Interesting. And I wonder what the primary ingredient is in the foods mentioned as "addictive." Hmm ... could it be the ubiquitous HFCS? Nah, that's a fallacy. It's OK in moderation, you know.

In the news brief I saw, it says that common fast food meals and the heavily processed foods that we're most accustomed to eat, have been stripped of fiber and nutritional value and are actually designed to trigger our innate preferences for fat, sugar and salt.

Is it any wonder we are in the midst of an obesity epidemic?

Here's what concerns me the most: the kids. I have enough issues with my weight now. And I grew up in a time and a family where soda (or pop) was a rare commodity. The only corn syrup I knew about was Karo--the "high fructose" variety was not even developed yet--and it was certainly not anything I ingested daily. The cereals I ate for breakfast did not have marshmallows, cookie bits, or artificial flavoring and coloring in them. A pop-tart was an after-school snack, not a breakfast staple. Ice cream, too, was a special treat ... and it did not have crushed up candy pieces or hunks of cookie dough, brownies, and other highly-sweetened, fat-filled foods added to it. If I was lucky I got a dab of Sander's chocolate syrup drizzled over the top of it. I never ate at a McDonald's until I was 10 years old (and I swear the food tasted better back then, but I'm probably making that up.)

Today's kids are offered all of the above--and more--on a regular, if not daily, basis. What can they choose to drink when they walk in the door of McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, Taco Bell? Pop (regular or diet). Hi-C. Lemonade. Artificial flavorings, artificial colorings, artificial sweeteners ... If they are even offered milk (which I don't necessarily condone as a healthy option), it's probably sweetened and thickened and there is chocolate or strawberry flavoring added. Ugh.

I remember that my brother used to wear "husky" jeans for a while during his childhood. I look back at pictures of him at that age and I think he looks just fine. And today, he's the slenderest of the three of us. And probably what passed for "husky" jeans are just normal now. Look at the size tags on your clothing. How many of us will admit that even though we've been a size XYZ for years now, we know the scale says a higher number than it did when we first started wearing it?

There are so many overweight kids now. Many of them have been diagnosed with diseases we never heard of at their ages--diabetes, ADD/ADHD, and autism to name just a few. What is going to happen to today's kids when they start hitting adulthood ... or the dreaded middle-age spread? How many new diseases or upgrades of the ones we already know about will be in the news 20 or 30 years from now?

Food expert Dr. Gene-Jack Wang, of Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York says, "We make our food very similar to cocaine now." (http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/03/28/fatty.foods.brain/index.html)

Chilling thoughts. I have more to say, but it will have to wait for another day.