Can food be addictive? (March 27, 2004)

Updated: February 14, 2006 - 8:58 AM

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Many members of Overeaters Anonymous/HOW consider food addictive. Members remain abstinent by eating exactly what is on their food plan.

But others question whether one can be addicted to food.

"I think behaviors that are required for life are not behaviors to which one can become addicted," says Dr. Guilford Hartley, medical director of the obesity program at Hennepin County Medical Center. "I think ... it is possible to become addicted to narcotics, cocaine, alcohol and tobacco, but not to air or food or water."

Still, James Hill, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado, says addiction to food is possible. "Whether we call it susceptibility or addiction, I'm open to thinking of it that way," he says. "The caveat is that I don't know any physical mechanisms that identify it as an addiction but it wouldn't surprise me that there are such. We don't know how to to treat a lot of people and we are missing something."