We all have foods that we’re ashamed to be addicted to. But it’s not totally our fault.
In fact, one study was just done to figure out which foods are the worst for getting us hooked. The study involved 120 undergraduates in one experiment, and 384 participants between the ages of 18 and 64 in the other.
The first study showed the participants the Yale Food Addiction Scale, which is “a measure that has been developed to identify those who are most likely to be exhibiting markers of substance dependence with the consumption of high fat/high sugar foods.”
Then, they were shown pictures of different food pairings, and asked to choose which foods would make them more likely to cause “problems” described by YFAS.
Some reported problems included being unable to stop eating a food, giving up important activities for the food, or showing “tolerance” for a food.
The higher fat, higher glycemic load foods were, no surprise, the ones more associated with addictive behaviors.
The second study involved rating the 35 foods from the previous study on the Likert scale from one to seven, with seven being “extremely problematic.”
The results varied slightly across the two parts of the study, but the top five in both contained pizza, chocolate, cookies, and ice cream. Here’s the top 10 from the second study, courtesy of Mental Floss.
- Pizza
- Chocolate
- Chips
- Cookies
- Ice Cream
- French Fries
- Cheeseburger
- Non-Diet Soda
- Cake
- Cheese
The conclusion of the study reads: “It is plausible that like drugs of abuse, these highly processed foods may be more likely to trigger addictive-like biological and behavioral responses due to their unnaturally high levels of reward.”
