A new study has just been published that claims junk food may be as addictive as heroin. As someone who was definitely a fast-food addict, this is easy for me to believe.
The study was conducted by Dr. Paul Kenny, a neuroscientist and it involved rats that were divided into three groups and given different diets.
There were no adverse effects on the first two groups, but the rats who ate as much junk food as they wanted quickly became very fat and started bingeing.
When researchers electronically stimulated the part of the brain that feels pleasure, they found that the rats on unlimited junk food needed more and more stimulation to register the same level of pleasure as the animals on healthier diets.
In our fast-paced, modern culture we are pretty much living like the rats with the supply of unlimited junk food. It’s all around us. And it’s cheap. It’s even harder if you were raised on junk food. To me, McDonald’s is the equivalent of a home-cooked meal. Thankfully, the longer I go without fast-food, the less I want it. But this was definitely a hard habit to break.
