Break the Fast-Food Habit

By Kristin Ohlson, Experience Life

The first time a clerk at McDonald’s offered to “supersize” his meal, Morgan Spurlock enthusiastically agreed, then trotted back to his car and wolfed down a giant burger, fries and soft drink. He soon felt queasy, and minutes later, this unhappy meal came back up. Nonetheless, he continued to eat three daily meals at McDonald’s as part of the monthlong experiment that became the hit documentary movie Super Size Me.By the end of the month, he was 24 pounds heavier and his health was rapidly declining. Interestingly, he also was craving the same high-fat, high-sugar, high-carb meals that once made him sick.

“At the beginning of the movie, the food was clearly toxic to his system,” says Mark Hyman, MD, author of UltraMetabolism: The Simple Plan for Automatic Weight Loss (Scribner, 2006). “But toward the end of the movie, he didn’t feel right unless he was getting that same food in regular doses. He was irritable, anxious and depressed when he wasn’t eating it because he was going through physical withdrawal.”

Spurlock’s case was so dramatic that many nutrition experts now use his movie to drive home a salient point: Not only is much of the fast-food menu unhealthy, but it can also make an addict of you.

The Fast-Food Fix
When most people refer to physical addictions, they’re usually talking about alcohol, cigarettes and drugs. But research now shows that some of the ingredients in fast foods can have a similar addictive effect. The iconic fast foods — big burgers, overstuffed burritos, fried chicken, fish sandwiches, French fries, soft drinks and milk shakes — are loaded with sugar, highly processed carbs, saturated fats and trans fats. And those are just the ingredients we know about.

Like thousands of other food additives in our nation’s food supply, many of the flavor- and texture-enhancing ingredients in fast food have not been tested, says Hyman. “The exact mechanisms of neurologic injury are worked out only for a few ingredients, such as monosodium glutamate and aspartame, which are excitotoxins that stimulate the NMDA receptors in the brain. But an analysis of the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study, published in the Lancet in 2005, showed clear behavioral effects from food additives that indicate an addictive effect,” he notes.

“Fast food is often a perfect combined-delivery vehicle for all those elements in the food supply chain that are the most addictive,” says David Katz, MD, MPH, director of the Yale Prevention Research Center and coauthor of two books on food and diet, including Dr. David Katz’s Flavor-Full Diet: Use Your Taste Buds to Lose Pounds and Inches With This Scientifically Proven Plan (Rodale, 2007).

There’s the sugar, the fat, the salt, the refined carbs. But that’s not all: “The physiological dependence is furthered by the convenience, by the notion of a bargain, by the marketing campaigns. You feel deprived if you don’t get your fix,” says Katz.

One recent study by researchers at the University of Bordeaux in France found that caged rats overwhelmingly opted for sugar- or saccharine-sweetened water over cocaine when given the choice. Rat studies also have shown that eating high levels of fat can cause the brain to secrete a chemical that encourages more eating and discourages physical activity — and that one high-fat meal is enough to kick off this process.

“Both the sugar and the fat evoke brain chemicals called beta-endorphin and dopamine, which are also activated by heroin and cocaine,” says Kathleen Desmaisons, PhD, an expert on sugar sensitivity who pioneered the field of addictive nutrition. “When you put the fat and the sugar together, it’s more than one plus one. It has what’s called a potentiated effect, with a bigger addiction response, a bigger brain response. It’s like doing two drugs at once.”

Diners are generally drawn to fast-food restaurants — which account for about half of all restaurant revenues in the United States — by the convenience, the price and the skillful marketing, much of it aimed at children. Once you’re inside, it’s hard to choose the salads and other less-noxious menu items, because smelling the sugar and fried foods incites pleasure chemicals in the brain — the same chemical fix you get when eating these items.

After their meals, people tend to feel happy and satisfied. Later, however, their insulin levels crash, and their mood drops. They crave more of the same fat- and sugar-laden foods, and they only feel better once they eat them.

“The world is bright until the effect wears off,” says Desmaisons. “Then people feel grumpy and hopeless and inadequate until they have more. That’s the hallmark of addiction: They need more to get the same pleasant effect.”

So fast-food devotees tend to overeat to feed their addiction. Many experts assert that they also overeat because they’re not getting all the nutrients they require — even though they might consume as many calories in a single fast-food meal as they need to eat in an entire day to maintain their weight. The problem is that the foods they are eating are calorie-dense, but nutrient-poor: The most common fast-food ingredients offer almost nothing in the way of phytonutrients, for example, and tend to be very low in soluble fiber.

We know that the more foods become “food products” — far removed from the farms, fields and orchards where food naturally originates — the less nutritious they are. And the highly processed ingredients that form the base of most fast foods demonstrate that effect quite clearly.

“When they refine wheat into white flour, they take out 22 vitamins and minerals,” explains Elizabeth Pavka, PhD, LDN, a North Carolina nutritionist and wellness consultant. “They ‘enrich’ it by adding back only four vitamins and iron. If we do the math, we see that 17 vitamins and minerals are not present in white flour. When you feed the body all that sugar and fat and the food doesn’t even give you the nutrients you need, it’s a setup for poor health, obesity and all the major health problems we’re seeing in our country.”

Next: The effect of fast food on your body

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Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Jessie M.

12:42PM PST on Feb 20, 2011

Great article, fast food is pretty gross. That smell at McDonalds isn't the smell of food being cooked that greets you when you go into a real restaurant, it's the smell of heated up chemicals! Blech!

send a green star

Cathy M.

6:38AM PDT on Aug 11, 2010

this confirms for me what i've said for years. fast food is evil and it will kill you. i work with kids on a daily basis and it makes me so sad each time i watch a child sit in front fast food junk, scarf it down and call it a meal.

Past Member .

2:00AM PST on Dec 11, 2009

I don't like it wheeen people make me feel guilty about liking fast food and eating it. I am very happy when I have the money to buy all the pizza, chinese food,cheeseburgers and chicken burritos with chile verde that I want. I feel unhappy when I don't.I am of normal to slightly underweight weight, have excellent blood pressure, and normal blood sugar values and cholesteral levels. I have had many many years where my income level was low an subsisted on brown rice and beans, and canned sardines.So now If I can get a big sub sandwhich piled with green peppers olives and onions and vinagarette, I sure want to enjoy it without a guilt trip.
Multivitamins

Rachel L.

2:14PM PST on Nov 21, 2009

but it's so delicious!!!

Margarita R.

2:01AM PST on Nov 19, 2009

Anybody remember the band Blues Traveler? The lead singer was a fast food addict who could actually distinguish which fast food joint any food item came from from the smell! His weight got to the point that he couldn't walk and had to perform his concerts from a wheelchair. It took a bandmate's drug overdose to finally make him realize that he too had an addiction that could kill him. He will never be thin, but he's actually healthy now and can dance to his own music.

gary richard jo T.

6:36AM PST on Nov 18, 2009

i had 26 burgers this morning

Amanda M.

3:57PM PST on Nov 12, 2009

Once again I give thanks for the fact that I live in a town that's 12 miles away from the nearest fast-food places! Not only is that stuff a drain on the wallet, but it's absolutely nasty! We make our own "fast food" at home (when you know the secret to McD's "special sauce," making your own single-patty Big Mac is NOTHING!), and even the kids prefer healthy homemade food to junk food.

Like Spurlock, my older daughter had a disagreement with greasy pizza several weeks ago. They'd gotten it for a class pizza party, and after school let out, we went to visit my MIL in the next county, which means a trip over two mountain ranges for us. I'll spare you the gory details, but even with Dramamine on board, my older daughter found that pizza literally coming back to haunt her, and that trip normally doesn't make her sick if she's got Dramamine in her system! As Charlie Brown would say, *sigh* Homemade pizza, here we come!

Christie C.

6:53PM PST on Nov 11, 2009

Great comment Laurie. I grew up in a similar situation. Then I was a huge fast food junkie in my teens and twenties, not thinking it was unhealthy due to ignorance, the intense media campaigns, and I had a high metabolism, until I turned 30. Then I started gaining weight and at the same time reading about what healthy food is and how it's not what's commonly available. Once I had the knowledge and had devised a way to make eating healthy convenient for my lifestyle, beating the addiction was truly easy. And yes, now fast food and junk food disgusts me just thinking of it. But it's everywhere! And in social situations, it can be really hard, like when all your friends want to eat at a restaurant, and you know there is nothing there you can eat.
Different addictions affect people differently, too. I was able to beat the junk food addiction, but have been trying to quit smoking for years, despite the knowledge of the harm it's doing and the will to quit. So, I can certainly understand how hard it can be to eat healthier, even when people know what they're eating is harming them. If anyone has any ideas how to overcome that, I'm all ears!

Paula P.

9:10AM PST on Nov 11, 2009

Awesome Article. When I ask about addictions, I do include fast food, because of "Super Size me". It is so necessary that we clearly explain and show people how that garbage ruins lives. 5 stars!

Evelyn G.

6:17AM PST on Nov 11, 2009

Wow! If this does not fix the fast-food habit, I don't know what will. Because you don't want all those nasty things to happen to you especially the brain fog. All what the author mentioned is true because I experienced it myself so I limit the potato chips I eat to a handful.

Evelyn Guzman
http://www.free-symptoms-of-diabetes-alert.com (If you want to visit, just click but if it doesn’t work, copy and paste it onto your browser.)