Fatty foods may cause cocain-like addiction

A new study in rats suggested that high-fat, high-calorie foods affect the brain in about the same way cocaine and heroin do. When rats consume foods like bacon, cheesecake, and other fatting foods, it leads to compulsive eating habits that resemble a drug addicion, the study found. Doing cocaine or eating too much fatty foods gradually overload the pleasure centers in the brain, according to Paul J. Kenny, Ph.D. an associate professor of molecular therapeutics at the Scripps Research Institute. "Eventually the pleasure centers "crash," and achieving the same pleasure or even just feeling normal, requites increasing the amounts of the drug or food, says Kenny. Kenny and his lab partner studied three groups of rats for 40 days. one group was fed regular rat food, second group was fed bacon, sausage, cheesecake, frosting, and other high-calorie foods but only for one hour each day and the third group was allowed to pig out on the unhealthy foods for up to 23 hours a day. The rats that were eating human food became obese quickly. Their brains also changed. It doesn't mean this will happen to humans but it can. When humans pig out to those un-healthy foods they end up obese. It is kind of sad they do these tests on rats but how else would they know about the study and what it does with the brain and other effects.