Abstract
The concept of food addiction is currently a highly debated subject within both the general public and the scientific communities. The term food addiction suggests that individuals may experience addictive-like responses to food, similar to those seen with classic substances of abuse. An increasing number of studies have established the prevalence and correlates of food addiction. Moreover, food addiction may be associated with obesity and disordered eating. Thus, intervening on food addiction may be helpful in the prevention and therapy of obesity and eating disorders. However, controversy exists about if this phenomenon is best defined through paradigms reflective of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) substance-related disorders (e.g. food addiction) or non-substance-related disorders (e.g. eating addiction) criteria. This review paper will give a brief summarisation of the current state of research on food addiction, a more precise definition of its classification, its differentiation from eating addiction and an overview on potential overlaps with eating disorders. Based on this review, there is evidence that food addiction may represent a distinct phenomenon from established eating disorders such as bulimia nervosa or binge-eating disorder. Future studies are needed to further examine and establish orthogonal diagnostic criteria specific to food addiction. Such criteria must differentiate the patterns of eating and symptoms that may be similar to those of eating disorders to further characterise food addiction and develop therapy options. To date, it is too premature to draw conclusions about the clinical significance of the concept of food addiction.
Highlights
The concept of food addiction is currently a highly debated subject within both the general public and the scientific communities
Controversy exists about if this phenomenon is best defined through paradigms reflective of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) substance-related disorders or non-substancerelated disorders criteria
Superficial evidence suggests that food addiction may be associated with overweight and obesity, but causal inferences have not been established to date
Summary
The concept of food addiction is currently a highly debated subject within both the general public and the scientific communities. Biological evidence suggests that the salt, sugars and fats contained within such highly palatable foods may have addictive potential via activating dopamine reward systems in the brain[2] To this end, several different variables that may indicate the molecular, cellular and systems-level mechanisms[18], reward mechanisms[19,20,21,22,23], specific components of food[17,24,25] or diagnostic criteria for substance dependence in relation to eating behaviours[26,27,28] as an addiction have been recently examined. Given the rapidly growing body of evidence for both contentions and the potential clinical relevance of understanding how dysregulated patterns of eating contribute to adverse health outcomes, it stands that all interpretations of these data must take the preliminary nature of research on the aetiology of food addiction into account.
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