[Closed] The most addictive food known to humankind

Kettle Chips

Agreed on nuts generally. But even worse than peanuts....

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I can keep going until my thumbs are bloodied stumps

Salt and vinegar dry roasted peanuts are worse. I'll just buy this little bag.. nom nom nom wait.. what? HOW MANY CALORIES DID I JUST EAT IN TEN MINUTES?

Just over 1000, actually, you fat bastard.

Walkers Corriander and Lime Poppadoms....

Toasted Pumpkin seeds

Pringles and similar.

The problem with pistachios is that the time to open is the same time it takes to eat one.

You just end up with a production line going.

Tyrell's sweet and salty popcorn.

Honey roast nuts.

Cadburys Fruit and Nut

Pizza

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even if the sauce is the wrong colour

Pringles or Lidls Hot Chilli Peanuts

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or any good ice cream tbh.

Put this in front of me, with a packet of Carrs crackers, (and red wine obviously) and I'll keep going, and going until I pass out into a cheese coma

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Tyrell's sweet and salty popcorn.

The truth ^^^^

Not far behind :

Mc Vities Homewheat
Mini Cheddars
Bacon sarnies
Pepperoni pizza

Salt and sugar and fat, in fact.

Kettle chips, when combined with beer- if I've got a big bag, I don't stop eating til I've drawn blood.

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Cheese

Including everything from cheese and biscuits to pizza to cheese sauce...

Almost anything involving cheese is basically unstoppable.

Binners was correct with his first option, roasted salted pistachios are just lethal I reckon I could eat them all day.

ohnohesback - Member
Pringles and similar.

Back of the class for you, it's not even food.

Cashew nuts on the nut front for me.

McVities caramel chcocolate digestives are great as well. I can go through an entire pack of them in about 5 minutes.

Seaweed peanuts

Bombay mix

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The crack cocaine of the popcorn world

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Tuna sashimi
Shortbread biscuits

Not at the same time ....

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I'm eating that spread right now

bacon butties, on white warburtons, with brown sauce.

Mayo

Balsamic vinegar Kettle Chips. Filthy things, I can, and do, eat them until I feel sick. Add in a couple of pints of ale and I will set there all day munching them.

[i]olddog - Member
Bombay mix[/i]

Ah, chap at work's Indian mum makes chiwda occasionally and he brings in a big tub. So spicy it makes you sweat.
Can't stop eating the stuff. Fill up paper cups and drink it down!
Good job it's only occasionally!

Pistachios
wasabi peas
chili rice crackers
Lotus caramel biscuits.

basically anything like that, snacky stuff.

Chocolate.

Surprised nobody has mentioned jaffa cakes yet?

A mug of tea with any sort of low-rent dunking biscuit with me, but particularly Abernethies.

Requires serious impulse control not to just demolish half the packet

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I'll keep going, and going until I pass out into a cheese coma

I never get ill but twice in my life I've been violently sick due to over-consumption of cheese.
- once was a variety of cheese from Fortnum & Mason - mostly brie, goats and comte
- second was a slab of that stuff that they grow in caves somewhere in the UK, eaten over the course of an afternoon/ evening (it had been sweating a bit...)

I never eat more than a couple of mouthfuls now.

Surprised nobody has mentioned jaffa cakes yet?

Blast.

Mini croissants, sometimes go to meeting where these are on offer - I usually make it to 7 or so before feeling guilty and letting other people have some...

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biltong
kfc hot wings

Wifes just bought back a few packs of nuts from Taiwan, honey roasted peanuts in charcoal powder, more morish than crack.
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binners had the correct answer, pistachio nuts.

I consumed a 1kg bag in one sitting. I was ashamed and very thirsty and I'd do it again. DON'T LOOK AT ME!!!

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Just.... one.... more...

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rabbit droppings?

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Great To Share? ha ha ha I think not

Refined carbohydrates: [i][u]the[/u][/i] gateway drug.

The best thing about Christmas Dinner, surely....

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I'd be quite happy if thats all it consisted of. Hundreds of them. Mmmmmmmmmm.... pigs in blankets

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Ooo good call Binners, one of the best things about Christmas, my mum pretty has to run the gauntlet to get them to the table without my dad and I swiping half of them.

Mini rolls - will do the packet if not supervised, guaranteed

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Pastizzi made me the man I am now (& there's more of me than I really want!)

If we're getting festive, it's got to be mince pies.

I'm forced to enact a self-imposed ban until December.

I think it stems from when I used to do the Glentress Winter Duathlon series. At the end of the (inevitably freezing and/or muddy) pre-Christmas race, you were able to gorge yourself on the shittiest Happy Shopper mince pies imaginable with a cup of steaming hot tea. In those circumstances, nothing could taste better.

M&S Cheesy Puffs. They make it with something so addictive that they should be banned.

I don't think I've ever put down pistachio or cashew nuts without monumental effort of will.

jaffa cakes & houmous are up there though.

Fig rolls.

Walkers Corriander and Lime Poppadoms....

+1

Oh yes, M&S Cheesy Puffs! Leaves that telltale dayglo orange powder around your mouth and on your fingers.

Pretty much any small hors d'oeuvres needs to be added to my list as well. And "indian/chinese/texmex" party selection packs.

I have a feeling that when MrsMC and tbe kids get home on Thursday they will just find my bloated corpse with a contented smile on it's face

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binners - Member

The best thing about Christmas Dinner, surely....
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I'd be quite happy if thats all it consisted of. Hundreds of them. Mmmmmmmmmm.... pigs in blankets

You utter bastard I've just eaten a hearty portion of my home made sausage casserole & mash and now I'm going to have to make pigs in blankets for tea.

Actually thanks Binners as I was in a sea of indecision about what to cook tonight 😀

Maynards wine gums by the bag/box. Trick is to eat them all quickly so that you don't feel like voming until they are all gone!

Mr Overshoot - by mentioning sausage casserole, you've just returned the favour, by solving my dilemma about what to have for tea.

I bought another 4 packs of various lovely sausages off the farmers market last week. I got home to be greeted by 'OH FFS!!! Not more sausages?!! The freezers full of them!!! STOP BUYING MORE SAUSAGES???'

I think subconsciously I'm terrified of running out of them. Might as well put some to good use tonight 😀

Walkers Corriander and Lime Poppadoms....

+2

Though I should really say I [i]was[/i] addicted. I no longer eat those or other [s]lovely[/s] shit food and have managed to lose a stone and half - who'd have thought it was that easy...

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I was going to post sausage rolls but bearnecessities beat me to it. My wife has just made some, they are still warm, and no diet in the world can resist eating them until there is nothing left

Actually, any combination of pastry, fat, salt and pork will do 🙁

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A sandwich of slightly toasted whole grain bread with lashings of crunchy peanut butter, home made raspberry jam and a layer of banana slices.

Post ride/run I will happily sit down and annihilate an entire box of this and two-pint carton of full-fat milk. Eighteen bowlfuls? Don't make me laugh.

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Satsumas - but not clementines, madarins or tangerines

Can I just add cheesecake to my never ending list..... 😳

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And

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and

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Guess this makes me a freak.

Original Cheese Cheetos.

I get a massive bag out the Polski Smak shop for about a quid and die, yellow stained, like the creep out Sin City.

Leftover habits from 4.20 munchie days.

Midget gems or sports mixture

Freshly made doughnuts

English strawberries (when they are very sweet not the ones with no taste)

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We have a winner

MoreCashThanDash - Member
Can I just add [i]cheesecake[/i] to my never ending list.....

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3147141/

Nature neuroscience
Author Manuscript
NIH Public Access
Cheesecake-eating rats and the question of food addiction
David H Epstein and Yavin Shaham

Additional article information

Abstract
Rats given extended access to high-fat high-sugar food show behavioral and physiological changes that are similar to those caused by drugs of abuse. However, parallels between drug and food “addiction” should be drawn with caution.

After half a century of research on the neurobiology of food and drug reward, Princeton professor Bartley Hoebel proposed that sugar can be addictive1. But can eating, even in an unhealthy, seemingly compulsive way, be legitimately labeled an addiction? A study in this issue by Johnson and Kenny2, using rat models, supports Hoebel’s controversial view that it can. Before we consider the implications of this, and suggest some caveats, let’s examine what Johnson and Kenny found.

Johnson and Kenny2 examined rats using behavioral models borrowed from drug-addiction research, but, instead of being given access to cocaine or heroin, the rats were given access to a cafeteria-style diet of energy-dense (high fat and/or high carbohydrate) food, including bacon, sausage, cheesecake, pound cake, frosting and chocolate. The diet had two behavioral effects that were similar to those of exposure to addictive drugs.

The first effect was disruption of sensitivity to brain-stimulation reward (BSR). Before the rat ‘cafeteria’ opened for business, the rats had spent 10–14 d learning to turn a wheel for electrical stimulation of the lateral hypothalamus. They were then divided into three groups, with one receiving a diet of standard laboratory rat chow, one receiving the standard diet along with restricted access (1 h per d) to the cafeteria food and the third receiving the standard diet and extended access (18–23 h per d) to the cafeteria food. All of the rats weighed 300–350 g when the exposure started. Over the next 40 d, the first two groups gained 80–100 g, which is developmentally typical, whereas the extended-access group gained almost twice as much. The BSR threshold, the minimal level of electrical current required to keep the rats turning the wheel, remained stable in the chow-fed and restricted-access rats but increased in the extended-access rats, reflecting a disruption in brain reward function. Similar disruptions occur after self-administration of addictive drugs (Fig. 1a)3,4. Notably, the reward disruption associated with the cafeteria diet persisted at least 14 d after access ended, which is substantially longer than disruptions observed after withdrawal from nicotine, cocaine or alcohol (Fig. 1b)5–7.

Figure 1
Prolonged access to cafeteria food causes persistent elevations in threshold for BSR: comparison with drugs of abuse. (a) BSR threshold during daily intake of cafeteria food or drugs. (b) BSR threshold after loss of access to cafeteria food or drugs. ...
The second behavioral effect involved a hallmark of addiction in humans: insensitivity to adverse consequences of drug self-administration. This has been successfully modeled in animal models of drug addiction. Another three groups of rats were given different types of food access for more than 40 d as described above, then some of the rats from each group were exposed to a fear-conditioning procedure in which an electric shock was paired with a light cue. On a subsequent test day, the rats were given access to the cafeteria food in the presence of the now fear-inducing light. The light suppressed cafeteria-food intake in the rats that had only received chow and the rats that had been given limited access to cafeteria food, but not in the rats that had extended access to the cafeteria food. Thus, as with addictive drugs, extended access to cafeteria food led to reward-seeking that was seemingly compulsive in that it was insensitive to a cue that warned of impending punishment.

In addition to these behavioral parallels between cafeteria-food intake and drug self-administration, Johnson and Kenny2 found a neurophysiological parallel between the two. Drawing on prior findings that human drug addiction and obesity are each associated with decreased expression of D2 dopamine receptors in the striatum8, the authors examined D2 receptor expression in the dorsal striatum of their rats after more than 40 d of exposure to cafeteria food and found that it was inversely related to weight gain. To determine whether reduced D2 receptor expression was actually causing addiction-like behaviors, the authors used a viral vector to knock down receptor expression in the dorsal striatum of rats that were exposed to cafeteria food for just 14 d, a period that is normally not long enough to induce changes in BSR threshold or fear-cue-induced suppression of feeding. When D2 receptor expression was knocked down, these addiction-like behavioral changes were seen within 14 d. This is an interesting, although anatomically imperfect, parallel with prior findings; escalation of voluntary cocaine intake in rats is associated with low D2 receptor expression in ventral, not dorsal, striatum9.

Johnson and Kenny’s work2 extends previous results from rat studies that had suggested addiction-like properties of prolonged access to palatable food. For example, earlier work has shown that intermittent sugar intake leads to physiological and behavioral symptoms on discontinuation that are similar to those seen during opiate withdrawal1 and a binge-like intake of sugar that to some degree resembled the behavior of rats given unlimited access to psychostimulants1. Rats that are given a choice between a sweet saccharin solution and cocaine strongly prefer saccharin10. Moreover, increased anxiety and other withdrawal-like symptoms after loss of access to high-fat food are mediated by the neuropeptide corticotropin-releasing factor, which also mediates symptoms of drug withdrawal11. Finally, studies using the reinstatement procedure (an animal model of drug relapse) have found overlaps between the neuronal mechanisms through which stressors or cues can cause rats to resume seeking of drugs or palatable food after loss of access12.

Given all of this, how far shall we go in drawing parallels between drug addiction and food addiction? Unlike drugs, food is essential for survival, but frequent consumption of bacon, sausage and cheesecake (the rats’ cafeteria diet) is not. The availability of such foods in most developed societies has increased so quickly that, similar to addictive drugs, they may stimulate brain reward systems more powerfully than we have evolved to handle, signaling a false fitness benefit and thereby reinforcing unhealthy patterns of consumption. In that respect, a parallel is defensible. But if we accept that parallel, there are at least two major caveats.

The first caveat is that food addiction is not identical to public health’s cause célèbre, obesity. If diagnostic criteria for food addiction were written to parallel the current diagnostic criteria for drug addiction, focusing on patterns of consumption that are maladaptive or problematic in any way, one could even argue that food addiction is neither necessary nor sufficient for obesity. The current draft of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual includes criteria for a food addiction–like syndrome known as binge-eating disorder (BED), which is characterized by distress-inducing, subjectively hard-to-control episodes in which one eats “an amount of food that is definitely larger than most people would eat in a similar period of time under similar circumstances.” The cumulative lifetime risk of BED in the US is only 3.9%; even when combined with subthreshold BED and “any binge eating,” this only rises to 11%, about one-third of the current prevalence of adult obesity (body mass index ? 30), 34%. Among adults with BED, the point prevalence of obesity is 42%, which is only about 8% higher than that seen in the general population13. BED is also distinct from obesity in terms of prognosis (BED is associated with a lower quality of life than obesity) and treatment response (BED responds to antidepressants, but obesity generally does not).

Of course, food addiction could be defined more broadly as frequent heavy consumption of energy-dense foods without frank bingeing. In that case, its overlap with obesity is surely much greater (although there are probably no reliable statistics to quantify the extent of the overlap), but there are still reasons to avoid drawing an easy equivalence. For example, it has been argued that the effects of behavior on weight could be subverted by metabolic defense of a ‘set point’14. A high set point could result from overeating, but could also be established pre/perinatally and could be influenced by environmental factors that do not even involve food15. There is vigorous debate about the interactions of genetic, environmental and behavioral causes of obesity, but it is best to be leery of any account that overwhelmingly attributes obesity to the behavior of the obese.

The second caveat is that, in the realm of behavioral causes of obesity, if we invoke the concept of addiction, we need to remember what we have learned from the study of other addictions: addiction does not obliterate the capacity for choice. Even addiction to intravenous heroin and crack cocaine can be highly responsive to consequences when the consequences (for example, money) are sufficiently large and predictable. Despite Johnson and Kenny’s findings2 of changes in BSR sensitivity, human addicts are not always hyporesponsive to alternative rewards, even in studies that have been interpreted as evidence that they are. This caveat is important because it underlies behaviorally based treatments for addiction. And if the kinds of alternative-reinforcer treatments that are effective in drug addiction can reduce regular overindulgence in energy-dense food (with or without frank bingeing), health benefits are likely to accrue regardless of whether appreciable weight loss occurs.

To restate the two caveats, whatever entity we call food addiction should not be seen as an excuse for unhealthy eating and the unhealthy eating associated with food addiction should not be equated with obesity. Johnson and Kenny’s rat data2 suggest something interesting but not something that reduces to an enticing headline or sound bite. We would be mistrustful of any summary simpler than this: given enough access to cheesecake and bacon, rats display patterns of eating that resemble those that account to some unknown degree for human obesity and these patterns seem behaviorally similar to, and share some neurophysiological substrates with, patterns of drug self-administration and withdrawal symptoms that resemble those seen in drug addiction.

Footnotes
COMPETING FINANCIAL INTERESTS

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Article information
Nat Neurosci. Author manuscript; available in PMC Aug 1, 2011.
Published in final edited form as:
Nat Neurosci. May 2010; 13(5): 529–531.
doi: 10.1038/nn0510-529
PMCID: PMC3147141
NIHMSID: NIHMS312594
David H Epstein and Yavin Shaham
Intramural Research Program, National Institute on Drug Abuse, US National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Yavin Shaham: vog.hin.adin.artni@mahahsy
Copyright notice and Disclaimer
The publisher's final edited version of this article is available at Nat Neurosci
See other articles in PMC that cite the published article.
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Fig Rolls.

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Licorice Allsorts- no one has mentioned them yet!