Are Ultraprocessed Foods Addictive?

The perils of highly processed snacks

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THE RECENT SURGE in the use of GLP-1-agonist weight-loss drugs has propelled addiction-adjacent terms such as “food noise” and “food cravings” into common vernacular. Now some neuroscientists and food-behavior researchers are trying to understand whether food—particularly ultraprocessed foods—can actually be addictive in the same way as other known substances such as cigarettes, alcohol and cocaine.

Potentially addictive foods are often “created in a way that is most palatable and most delicious,” says Alex DiFeliceantonio, an appetitive neuroscientist at Virginia Tech. “When you look at the food environment, those items tend to be ultraprocessed.”

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN spoke with DiFeliceantonio about research unpacking whether food addiction is real, whether certain types of foods might have more addictive qualities and how related eating disorders can be addressed.

An edited transcript of the interview follows.

What does it mean to have a food addiction?

When we're thinking about food addiction and looking qualitatively at what people are eating when they are saying they can’t stop eating, we have to put it in the framework of a substance use disorder. These disorders affect life in an untenable way. Food addiction isn’t in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) like substance use disorder is, but there is a proposal to have it put in the DSM.

We typically look to the Yale Food Addiction Scale for clinical evaluation. The scale was designed to assess the same criteria as for substance use disorder in the