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Cheesecake-eating rats and the question of food addiction

Nature Neuroscience volume 13, pages 529–531 (2010)Cite this article

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Rats given extended access to high-fat high-sugar food show behavioral and physiological changes that are similar to those caused by drugs of abuse. However, parallels between drug and food “addiction” should be drawn with caution.

After half a century of research on the neurobiology of food and drug reward, Princeton professor Bartley Hoebel proposed that sugar can be addictive1. But can eating, even in an unhealthy, seemingly compulsive way, be legitimately labeled an addiction? A study in this issue by Johnson and Kenny2, using rat models, supports Hoebel's controversial view that it can. Before we consider the implications of this, and suggest some caveats, let's examine what Johnson and Kenny found.

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Figure 1: Prolonged access to cafeteria food causes persistent elevations in threshold for BSR: comparison with drugs of abuse.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Health and Human Services, Intramural Research Program, National Institute on Drug Abuse, US National Institutes of Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

    David H Epstein & Yavin Shaham

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  1. David H Epstein
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  2. Yavin Shaham
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Correspondence to Yavin Shaham.

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Epstein, D., Shaham, Y. Cheesecake-eating rats and the question of food addiction. Nat Neurosci 13, 529–531 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn0510-529

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