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FAST FOOD AND OBESITY
[1] Studies show that 1 obesity is increasing rapidly across all age groups. [2] Recent evidence from scientists has shown that eating "fast food" can be addictive in much the same way as using controlled substances can be. [3] The proposed conclusions contend that the brains of 2 overeaters experienced chemical changes in response to unbalanced diets with a high content of processed sugar, salt, and saturated fats. [4] According to researchers, 3 "fast food", such as hamburgers, processed sugar, and a wide range of deep-fried foods, can trigger a dependency in the brain that perpetuates a habit of further use. [5] It is a view that is increasingly supported by scientists who see a co-dependency between people's decisions and environmental influences (including the wide availability of people's favorite "fast foods") 4 that have structural effects on human development. 5
In time and 6 in some cases, if people continue a pattern of consumption containing too much unhealthy food, 7 their intake of this food will initiate changes in 8 the brain that elevates the minimum level of ingestion the brain needs for satiation. Moreover, since high consumption of "fast foods" stimulates opiates in the brain (substances which act as natural pain relievers), large, recurrent doses of "fast food" can 9 mimic the effects of opiates, albeit in a less intense form. 10 Scientists raising rats on a diet of twenty-five percent sugar found that upon suddenly eliminating glucose from the rats' food supply, the animals experienced all the symptoms of withdrawal attributed to reducing traditional addictive opiates, including shivering and chattering teeth.
Later, by treating rats with drugs that block opiate receptors, scientists were able to lower the amount of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens of rats' brains, an area linked with the dynamics of 11 reward, there by such neurochemistry can be seen in heroin addicts coping with withdrawal. By this reasoning, obesity, 12 like other addictions, can be viewed as a disease beyond the control of those afflicted by it.
[1] This has brought lawyers to argue that civil society has a responsibility to regulate food 13 and educating people about the abuse of "unhealthy foods" in a way that is comparable to society's control of opiates and narcotics. [2] Corporations that target this 14 predictability in human beings can then be held liable for the sicknesses that result from the poor eating habits overwhelming their customers. [3] For these researchers, the distinction between a habit and an addiction is not quantitative but qualitative. [4] Their consensus is that individuals can still moderate their behavior to control the effects of what they eat on their systems. 15
