Studies

Researcher: Food Is More Addictive Than Crack Cocaine

Crack pie!
Crack pie! Photo: Hannah Whitaker

Ever felt ready for rehab after one too many late-night nacho platters? Of course you have. Well, now Dr. Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, has arrived on the scene to confirm what we long suspected is true: Food is addictive. Like, more addictive than crack.

Time magazine has the controversial report, critiqued by many experts because food, unlike crack cocaine, doesn’t lead to most people “behaving like addicts” (we might dispute this based on personal experience).

Volkow says that crack isn’t quite as whack as you might think, though: “If you look at people who take drugs, the majority are not addicted,” Volkow says. In fact, fewer than 20 percent of users become addicted.

Time contrasts this with the (ahem, ample) proportion of people who are currently obese, 34 percent of adults over 20, “a significantly larger group” in more ways than one. “Add in those who are overweight, and fully two-thirds of Americans clearly have significant difficulties controlling their food intake. So, measured by the proportion of those who behave in health-risking ways with each substance, food could actually be considered several times more addictive than crack,” the mag states.

And so we come to one conclusion: David Chang, on point as ever, was eerily prescient with his crack pie.

Can Food Really Be Addictive? [Time]

Researcher: Food Is More Addictive Than Crack Cocaine