By Dr. Steve Hoody from Healthier2gether
Why is weight loss so hard? Junk food is easier to find and more immediately rewarding than even hard drugs. Cookies could be even more addictive than heroin.
Studies reveal the shocking power of sweetness. Human subjects were asked to push a button as soon as they sensed a hit of sugar placed upon their tongues. Their reactions were almost instantaneous — a fraction of a second after the sugar landed on their tongues, they sensed it.
“The smoke from cigarettes takes ten seconds to stir the brain, but a touch of sugar on the tongue will do so in a little more than half a second,” Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Moss writes in his new book “Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions.” “That’s nearly twenty times faster than cigarettes.”
“Not only can food be as addictive as cigarettes, alcohol, and some drugs,” he said. “But in some way even more so.”
