by Caroline Sundstrom
When I was a kid, I remember going out to eat was a treat. My sisters and I dreaded the idea of going to the doctor when we were young, but the possibility of stopping by Chick-Fil-A on the way home was motivation enough to get our flu shots every year. We didn’t go out to eat a ton, but the times we did led me to crave more.
The phrase “you get what you pay for” has never been truer when it comes to what we eat as consumers. The food we eat makes up who we are. Many of us eat when we’re happy, anxious or stressed to combat or promote negative or happy feelings. However, the chemicals released when we eat junk food do more harm than good. While fast food is quick, easy, and cheap, it is physically addictive to consumers and creates long term health problems.
In high school, students are educated on the dangers of drugs and how addictions can negatively affect the body and mind. In a recent study by Scripps Research Institute, they found evidence that fast food is much like a drug. Scripps used cocaine addiction to help us understand the similarities. The article reads, “In cocaine abuse, for example, the drug alters the flow of dopamine by blocking its retrieval. flooding the brain and overstimulating the receptors, something that eventually leads to physical changes in the way the brain responds to the drug. The new study shows that the same thing happens in junk food addiction.” This study shows that fast food can become physically addictive, and we are uninformed of how the chemicals in it affect our health.
The study that produced these results was on rats and how fast food affected their health. They gave rats fast food and watched to see if any compulsive behaviors towards the food happened. Kenny, a researcher with the study comments on the results said, “the animals completely lost control over their eating behavior and continued to overeat even when they anticipated receiving electric shocks, highlighting just how motivated they were to consume the palatable food.” The same chemicals that promote drug addictions are released when we eat fast food.
The more we consume, the more we are exposed to the addiction of fast food. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good Chick-Fil-A club sandwich… and even these statistics can’t stop me from ordering on my Chick-Fil-A app. However, we need to make ourselves aware of potential harm that can come from too much fast food. Unlike the saying, you really can have too much of a good, or delicious thing.
