Junk food is addictive as heroin say scientists

Scientists have announced that junk food is as addictive as heroin.

Scientists in Florida have announced the results of their experiements on three groups of rats. Those results are, they say, that junk food is as addictive as heroin. Which is to say, really not all that addictive as heroin itself is not really physically addictive: it is psychologically addictive (unlike nicotine say, which really is physically addictive).

There's also something rather puzzling about the research itself:

Dr Paul Kenny, a neuroscientist, carried out the research which shows how dangerous high fat and high sugar foods can be to our health . “You lose control. It’s the hallmark of addiction,” he said. The researchers believe it is one of the first studies to suggest brains may react in the same way to junk food as they do to drugs.

Well, yes and no, the end result of the experiments were certainly not all that encouraging:

When researchers electronically stimulated the part of the brain that feels pleasure, they found that the rats on unlimited junk food needed more and more stimulation to register the same level of pleasure as the animals on healthier diets.

Seems conclusive, no? Well, no, it isn't conclusive. For the experiment itself wasn't really about junk food: it was about obesity. There were three groups of rats:

One got normal amounts of healthy food to eat. Another lot was given restricted amounts of junk food and the third group was given unlimited amounts of junk, including cheesecake, fatty meat products, and cheap sponge cakes and chocolate snacks.

You see what they've done there? There are not fat rats who eat healthy food. There are not fat rats who eat junk food.There are fat rats who eat junk food. The problems are only with those rats which are fat, not with those who eat junk food. So what the research has shwon is that being fat is a problem, not that eating junk food it.

But don't worry, this research will still be used to justify taxing or banning junk food even though it doesn't actually identify junk food as the problem.