How to know if you might be a junkie, plus small steps you can take to promote a healthier and longer life
Ultra-processed food, aka highly processed or junk food, now accounts for more than half of all calories consumed in the United States, U.K. and Australia, fuelling soaring rates of obesity in adults and children and increasing the risk of physical disease, dementia and early death. But we just can’t get enough of this sticky sweet, salty, fatty, greasy, heavenly awful stuff.
In the past two decades, the proportion of calories from ultra-processed food consumed by U.S. kids grew from 61% to 67%. Rates exceed 50% and are increasing among U.S. adults, too, and are also high and on the rise in other industrialized countries.
It’s not entirely our fault.
Highly processed foods and drinks include everything from breakfast cereal, packaged muffins and flavoured yogurt to potato chips, candy, soda, canned soup, instant noodles, pepperoni, boxed and frozen ready-to-eat dinners and, well, grocery store aisles are packed with this crap.
Here’s the thing: Junk food is not only ubiquitous and heavily marketed, but it’s designed by manufacturers to trigger a temporary emotional high.
Yep, the bulk of what we now eat is designed to be addictive.
A new poll finds 13% of U.S. adults ages 50 to 80 meet the criteria for addiction to highly processed food, and 44% have at least one of the symptoms of addiction. Rates are similar in younger adults and kids, said study team member Ashley Gearhardt, PhD, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. “Current estimates suggest that 14% of younger adults and 12% of children meet the threshold for an addiction to highly processed food,” Gearhardt said.
The good news: Minor changes in what you eat can bring big results. More on that below. But first, you need to know something…
Designed for bliss
There’s no universal definition of highly processed food. But food labels offer clear clues of “food” that’s barely food.
Look for such non-food ingredients as artificial flavourings, empty calories like refined grains, and unpronounceable fats, often accompanied by heaping’s of salt, and/or sugar by various names sprinkled throughout the ingredient list and — as if that’s not enough — emulsifiers needed to stabilize the slurry. The ingredients are often far from natural, synthesized in labs or at best drowned in stuff our bodies can tolerate only in limited amounts.
All this junk is “designed and engineered to hit your ‘bliss point’ and have maximum craveability,” Gearhardt told me.
Salad’s good, right? Yeah, no—not when it comes in a box.
Notably, however, there’s no formal definition for addiction to highly processed food. So, Gearhardt and her colleagues based their queries and findings on standard measures of addiction to substances like tobacco or alcohol, such as loss of control over intake, intense cravings, and withdrawal. To meet the threshold of junk food addiction, a person must have at least two symptoms, plus clinically significant impairment, or distress in the past year.
“The word addiction may seem strong when it comes to food, but research has shown that our brains respond as strongly to highly processed foods, especially those highest in sugar, simple starches, and fat, as they do to tobacco, alcohol and other addictive substances,” Gearhardt said in a statement.
I asked her why it’s important to investigate the addictive nature of junk food. “People who exhibit signs of addiction in their intake of highly processed foods have a lower quality of life across all domains and appear to be less responsive to traditional behavioural weight loss treatments,” she said. “It is also important to understand whether highly processed foods [are] rewarding enough to trigger a compulsive, addictive process for some people. Given that highly processed foods are now the dominant source of calories in our environment, it is important to know if they can trigger an addiction.”
Real risks to the brain and body
It’s been estimated that eating one hotdog can shave 48 minutes off your prospects for healthy living down the road.
Eating ultra-processed food has been linked to a higher risk of everything from obesity, type 2 diabetes, cancer and heart attacks and, as one study bluntly concluded, a “higher risk of early death from all causes.”
Processed food consumption also leads to cognitive decline, a recent study found.
A separate 2022 study of UK residents, published in the journal Neurology, found that for every 10% increase in highly processed food intake, people face a 25% higher risk of developing dementia.
“Ultra-processed foods are meant to be convenient and tasty, but they diminish the quality of a person’s diet,” said study team member Huiping Li, PhD, of Tianjin Medical University in China. “These foods may also contain food additives or molecules from packaging or produced during heating, all of which have been shown in other studies to have negative effects on thinking and memory skills.”
New research, published yesterday in the journal eClinicalMedicine, indicates the risk of cancer also increases with every unhealthy calorie you ingest. Scientists analysed eating habits and health outcomes of 200,000 middle-aged U.K. adults, then accounted for differences in physical activity, body-mass index, smoking status and other factors. The findings:
Each 10% increase in consumption of ultra-processed food was linked to a 2% higher risk of cancer and a 6% higher risk of cancer death, along with a 16% higher risk for death from breast cancer and 30% elevated odds of dying from ovarian cancer.
The study, and others like it, are observational and don’t prove cause and effect. But a small 2019 study found a direct link between consumption of processed food and increased calorie intake and weight gain. Scientists brought 20 healthy people into a clinic for a month and controlled and monitored everything they ate. The findings:
When people eat highly processed food like sugary cereals for breakfast or fast-food quesadillas for lunch, they consume more calories throughout the rest of the day and gain more unintentional weight compared to people who breakfast on fruits, nuts, and other minimally processed food.
“These highly processed foods are designed to make you want more and more and more and override your satiety signals,” Gearhardt said. “The cues for them are everywhere, and the food environment is set up to constantly tempt you.”
How to kick the habit
I’m not here to suggest you never have another cookie or avoid pizza forever. Life’s too short for that sort of rigidity.
Besides, it’s not easy for many of us to eat well all the time. And changing any unhealthy habit, let alone kicking an addiction, is truly hard. Even knowing what food, we should eat or avoid can be challenging, given ongoing changes to nutrition advice coupled with slick marketing and checkout-counter placements of junk food. Meanwhile, millions of Americans have far easier access to multiple fast-food restaurants than to a single grocery store.
But small changes—as little as swapping in an apple for a few cookies each day, or nixing just one large slice of pizza, for example—can make a big health difference. Start at the grocery store, experts advise, by shopping smart so there’s less junk available in the house.
If you buy them they will be consumed!
A great approach to improve your diet is to work on other positive behaviours proven to generate a positive cycle of better physical, mental and emotional well-being, which gives you more natural energy and makes you less inclined reach for a donut or cook dinner out of a box: physical activity, quality sleep and stress management. Nutritionists also strongly advise reading food labels and avoiding packaged items that contain more than a handful of ingredients or anything you can’t pronounce. The healthiest foods, it should be noted, have only one ingredient.
Gearhardt suggests some targeted tactics for kicking a junk food habit or addiction:
- Have a little compassion for yourself, yet give thought and weight to any emotional moments, activities, times of day or social relationships that play into your junk food consumption.
- Find some whole foods that you enjoy—such as fruits, vegetables, beans, and lean meats. Stock up on them, keep them handy for snacks, and make them the main sources of your calories.
- Eat often enough that you don’t get extremely hungry, which can trigger junk food cravings and the resulting temporary reward to your brain.
“Finally,” she says, “this isn’t about ‘eating perfectly.’ This black-and-white thinking can backfire. It is really about developing a healthier, less harmful relationship with food that works for you.”
