Category: Nutrition

You might be addicted to the foods you eat every day — without even knowing it.

Ultra-processed foods high in carbohydrates and fats, like sweets and salty snacks, are as addictive as nicotine and alcohol, according to a review.

Analysis of 281 studies from 36 different countries reveals that the prevalence of food addiction in adults is 14 percent, a similar rate to alcohol (14 percent) and tobacco (18 percent).

The rate of food addiction in people with binge eating disorder is more than 50 percent and in obese patients undergoing bariatric surgery, it is 32 percent.

While one can quit drinking or smoking, one can’t give up eating, so eliminating addictive foods from the diet becomes more complex.

The authors suggest identifying foods that are highly addictive, along with knowing why, which could help people to avoid consuming them.

Professor Ashley Gearhardt, the study’s first author, said:

“There is converging and consistent support for the validity and clinical relevance of food addiction.

By acknowledging that certain types of processed foods have the properties of addictive substances, we may be able to help improve global health.”

Not all foods are addictive

Since processed foods make up large portions of the Western diet, the issue becomes more challenging.

Dr Alexandra DiFeliceantonio, study co-author, said:

“Most foods that we think of as natural, or minimally processed, provide energy in the form of carbohydrate or fat—but not both.”

One way to distinguish ultra-processed foods (UPFs) from minimally processed foods is that UPFs often contain added fats and refined carbohydrates which are not used in home kitchens but are in food factories.

Minimally processed or natural foods rarely contain equivalent levels of fat and carbohydrates.

For example, an apple contains 55 kcal of carbohydrates and
1.5 kcal of fat (a ratio of roughly 1:0) and 100 grams of salmon contains 0 kcal of carbohydrates and 73 kcal of fat (a ratio of roughly 0:1).

UPFs, by contrast, contain much larger amounts of both carbohydrates and fats, in roughly equal proportions.

For example, a 100-gram chocolate bar has 266 kcal of fat and 237 kcal of carbohydrates, making a ratio of 1:1.

The combination of carbohydrates and fats appears to have an additive effect on the brain’s reward system that potentially increases addiction to these types of foods.

Dr DiFeliceantonio said:

“Many ultra-processed foods have higher levels of both.

That combination has a different effect on the brain.”

Due to food scarcity, some countries are dependent on UPFs as a large source of calories, but people in high-income countries do not need UPFs.

Dr DiFeliceantonio said:

“Given how prevalent these foods are—they make up 58 percent of calories consumed in the United States—there is so much we don’t know.”

Related

• Highly processed foods share many qualities with drugs that people abuse.
• Ultra-processed foods are linked to both depression and anxiety.
• A study challenges the idea that ultra-processed foods are ‘hyperpalatable’.

The study was published in the British Medical Journal (Gearhardt et al., 2023).

Many people experience this unusual sensation even with both feet firmly on the ground.

A sudden sensation of dizziness, or that your head is spinning, could be a sign of vitamin D deficiency.

It is a symptom of a common type of vertigo called benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV).

Other symptoms include nausea and vomiting, as well as a loss of balance.

However, taking vitamin D and calcium supplements twice a day can reduce the chance of experiencing vertigo, research finds.

The people who are most deficient in vitamin D get the most benefit from it.

Technically, vertigo is the symptom of dizziness and the feeling of the world spinning — it does not have to be in response to heights.

Many people experience vertigo with both feet firmly on the ground.

The condition is rarely serious, but can be very irritating, with 86 percent of sufferers reporting that it interrupts their daily lives and leads to some days off work.

Research finds that taking vitamin D and calcium supplements can prevent it from recurring.

Dr Ji-Soo Kim, study co-author, said:

“Our study suggests that for people with benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, taking a supplement of vitamin D and calcium is a simple, low-risk way to prevent vertigo from recurring.

It is especially effective if you have low vitamin D levels to begin with.”

The study included almost one thousand people, around half of whom were given vitamin D supplements and calcium.

People with low vitamin D levels took 400 IU of vitamin D and 500 mg of calcium twice a day.

The results showed that the supplements reduced the recurrence of vertigo by 24 percent.

People who were more deficient in vitamin D got greater benefit from taking the supplements, seeing a 45 percent reduction in symptoms.

Dr Kim said:

“Our results are exciting because so far, going to the doctor to have them perform head movements has been the main way we treat benign paroxysmal positional vertigo.

Our study suggests an inexpensive, low-risk treatment like vitamin D and calcium tablets may be effective at preventing this common, and commonly recurring, disorder.”

The study was published in the journal Neurology (Jeong et al., 2020).

Vitamin D supplementation could lower the risk of dying from cancer-related diseases and increase life expectancy by years.

Tiredness and weak muscles can be signs of vitamin D deficiency, as can headaches and poor sleep.

Taking vitamin D can reduce cancer mortality rates by 13 percent with 30,000 fewer cancer-related deaths each year, according to a German study.

Based on their national data on cancer mortality in 2016, vitamin D supplementation could significantly lower cancer deaths in adults over age 50.

They say if all these middle-aged Germans took vitamin D, nearly 30,000 premature deaths from cancer could be prevented and 300,000 years of life could be saved.

In recent years scientists have been looking into the effect of vitamin D on several conditions such as diabetes, inflammatory diseases, cancer, and respiratory illnesses.

Reviews of large clinical trials show that vitamin D supplementation is linked to a 13 percent reduction in the cancer death rate.

Dr Hermann Brenner, the study’s co-author, said:

“In many countries around the world, the age-adjusted rate of cancer mortality has fortunately declined over the past decade.

However, given the often considerable costs of many new cancer drugs, this success has often come at a high price.

Vitamin D, on the other hand, is comparatively inexpensive in the usual daily doses.”

Older people are commonly found to have vitamin D deficiency, particularly those with cancer.

In 2016, the number of people over-50 in Germany was about 36 million.

The research team calculated that the treatment cost of vitamin D supplementation at a 1,000 international units daily dose would cost 25 euros per person a year.

Considering its health benefits, the cost for the health care system would be practically nothing after all.

Dr Brenner, said:

“In view of the potentially significant positive effects on cancer mortality — additionally combined with a possible cost saving — we should look for new ways to reduce the widespread vitamin D deficiency in the elderly population in Germany.

In some countries, foods have even been enriched with vitamin D for many years — for example, in Finland, where cancer mortality rates are about 20 percent lower than in Germany.

Not to mention that there is mounting evidence of other positive health effects of adequate vitamin D supply, such as in lung disease mortality rates.

Finally, we consider vitamin D supplementation so safe that we even recommend it for newborn babies to develop healthy bones.”

We can all improve our vitamin D levels at no cost by exposure to sunlight everyday.

The German Cancer Research Centre recommends three times a week for at least 12 minutes outside in the sun.

During this period of time the face, hands, arms and legs should be left uncovered without wearing sunscreen.

The study was published in the journal Molecular Oncology (Niedermaier et al., 2021).

This plant-based nutrient may help protect against disability and disease into old age.

Dietary fibre consumed from fruits, cereals and breads is linked to aging successfully over many years.

The surprising benefits of fibre-rich foods have been underestimated, but Australian researchers reveal that fibre makes a big difference to successful aging.

They studied 1,609 adults who were 49 years and older for 10 years to find out the relationship between healthy aging and carbohydrate nutrition.

Total carbohydrate intake, total fibre intake, sugar intake, glycaemic load and glycaemic index factors were examined.

Fibre had the largest impact on what the researchers called ‘successful aging.’

Successful aging was defined as the absence of:

• cognitive impairment,
• disability,
• depressive symptoms,
• respiratory symptoms,
• and chronic diseases including coronary artery disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer.

Professor Bamini Gopinath, the study’s lead author, said:

“Out of all the variables that we looked at, fiber intake — which is a type of carbohydrate that the body can’t digest — had the strongest influence.

Essentially, we found that those who had the highest intake of fiber or total fiber actually had an almost 80 percent greater likelihood of living a long and healthy life over a 10-year follow-up.

That is, they were less likely to suffer from hypertension, diabetes, dementia, depression, and functional disability.”

We might expect that sugar intake would have a big impact on healthy aging, but in this study it was not linked to aging well.

Professor Gopinath pointed out that the older adults who participated in this study had a low intake of carbonated and sugary drinks in their diet.

The study was published in The Journals of Gerontology: Series A (Gopinath et al., 2016).