Why do you think they call it dope junk food, kid?
Scientists have finally confirmed what the rest of us have suspected for years: Bacon, cheesecake, and other delicious yet fattening foods may be addictive.
A new study in rats suggests that high-fat, high-calorie foods affect the brain in much the same way as cocaine and heroin. When rats consume these foods in great enough quantities, it leads to compulsive eating habits that resemble drug addiction, the study found.
Doing drugs such as cocaine and eating too much junk food both gradually overload the so-called pleasure centers in the brain, according to Paul J. Kenny, Ph.D., an associate professor of molecular therapeutics at the Scripps Research Institute, in Jupiter, Florida. Eventually the pleasure centers "crash," and achieving the same pleasure--or even just feeling normal--requires increasing amounts of the drug or food, says Kenny, the lead author of the study.
We're not obese, we're addicts! What's that make McDonald's, the crack house of fast foods?
Elsewhere on the food front, there's such a strawberry glut that the low prices are threatening some Florida farmers, so they're destroying some of their crops to limit supply and bring the prices up. This obvious waste upsets people who work in soup kitchens and other advocates for the hungry. One farmer has solved the dilemma by letting people pick strawberries from his field for free, though that goes against the current wisdom that says somebody might get hurt and sue him.
Strawberry fields forever, right?
