Sunshine Gentile’s migraines started out feeling like the flu. She was 36 when they began, giving her an aching head and muscles and fatigue. The pain was worse if she moved around. Eventually, her migraines grew so bad that she’d be in bed for a week, and doctors couldn’t tell her why it was happening.
What she did know, and what frightened her, was that the painkillers the doctors prescribed either didn’t work for long or came with unbearable side effects.
“It was scary because being that young and seeing that I was burning through all those medications at that rate made me realize there’s not enough on the market to get me through the rest of my life,” Gentile told The Epoch Times.
Her family encouraged her to eliminate possible triggers like cleaners, perfumes, and detergents. When that didn’t work, she started giving up various foods. Nothing much changed when she gave up gluten, but cutting back on processed carbohydrates like sugars, breads, and pasta would deliver profound relief. Specialists told her that food wasn’t causing her issues, but experience told her otherwise.
“My neurology team was amazing, but they just didn’t know. They hadn’t experienced this with anybody before.”
Unfortunately, learning what caused her migraines wasn’t the end of her battle. For Gentile and many others with food addiction, resisting comfort foods—even when they bring pain and disease—can feel like a hopeless battle. Gentile would find herself giving up one food, feeling better, and discovering a substitute food also made her miserable.
Even with the cycle of crippling pain, she struggled to give up the foods at the center of her suffering. Her eventual recovery came when she could finally face and deal with her food addiction, a complex and sometimes controversial disorder that is closely linked to ultra-processed foods and their unusual effects on our brains and bodies.
Unrecognized Disorder
Patients and doctors often fail to connect the dots between symptoms—like migraines, joint pain, and insulin resistance—and food. The medical system is only now starting to focus on the nuances of nutrition and does not yet recognize food addiction. Many patients, some unaware of their own unhealthy eating habits, have little insight into the core of their problem.
Doctors rely on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) to determine mental health diagnoses, which, in turn, helps dictate the correct treatment for patients. However, food addiction isn’t officially considered a substance abuse disorder, despite some efforts to include it.
The condition has overlapping characteristics with obesity and binge eating disorder. A person may struggle with one, two, or all three issues. Some patients receive medication or surgery for obesity or get diagnosed with binge eating yet still feel unwell.
The bliss point is the perfect combination of sugar, salt, and fat that makes us crave more of a certain food. Illustration by The Epoch Times
Food as a ‘Drug’
Ultra-processed food is so “wildly different” from real food that it should be considered a chemical substance, especially for children, Ashley Gearhardt, associate professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, told the American Psychological Association. Her research has found that 12 percent of children and 14 percent of adults show signs of food addiction.
“It’s not just really about the calories. It starts to be about the hedonics, the pleasure, the emotion regulation from a very, very young age,” Gearhardt said. “We do see that children who are showing these signs of addiction in their eating, they have higher body mass index, higher emotional overeating. They’re less sensitive to their satiety signals. They have greater body fat percentages.”
- Taking more of a substance than intended
- Wanting or unsuccessfully attempting to quit the substance
- Spending excessive time and effort to quit the substance
- Neglecting obligations or social functions due to substance use
- Continuing substance use even when feeling unwell
- Needing more of the substance for desired effects
- Experiencing withdrawal symptoms such as anxiety, agitation, or other physical struggles
- Facing clinically significant impairment or distress
Food Addiction or Something Else?
Despite growing recognition, many people still don’t believe food addiction is real or that food is to blame for problems like overeating and obesity. The Food Addiction Institute, a nonprofit organization, is lobbying to have it included among diagnosable substance abuse disorders, with a public plea to sign its petition.
“We have therefore sought to be more positive, trying to suggest some ways in which the model could be explored further to determine its validity,” the authors wrote. “We take very seriously a recent caution against ‘tossing the baby out with the bathwater’ by simply dismissing the concept before the appropriate neuroscientific studies have been done in humans.”
Addiction Revelations
Gentile’s wake-up call came after watching videos from the Addiction Reset Community (ARC), a privately-owned online support group for food addiction. It convinced her that food cravings were driving her physical problems.
“The rational part of my brain would never be willing to hurt myself in this way otherwise,” Gentile, who went on to become a certified addiction recovery advocate with ARC, said.
For Amy Lammert, a nurse who’s now an assistant director with ARC, this revelation was pivotal. She viewed it as equivalent to a diagnosis.
“If there was a cause,” she told The Epoch Times, “then there could be a solution.”
Lammert spent years on her feet, caring for long-term patients in a demanding environment. She had reservations about whether her body could keep up, as years of intense exercise only intensified her knee pain, and doctors wouldn’t recommend surgery.
She stumbled on an ARC video and wondered if food addiction could be a problem for her. She grew up eating both whole food and ultra-processed food and never separated the two as being different.
Lammert had always eaten whatever she wanted and was thin—until she became a mom. Then she tried one diet after another until an overweight doctor convinced her to give up dieting because her body was “apparently happy at this weight.” Nobody ever suggested to her that the type of food she ate could be a problem.
To test the addiction, Lammert removed some processed foods from her diet and experienced only minor pain relief. Desperate for better mobility, she finally gave up all processed food and sugar, and within four days, the pain lifted.
Overlapping Conditions
Misconceptions often tangle with the overlap that food addiction has with other medical conditions. A 2024 study in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions explains the distinctions between obesity, binge eating, and food addiction.
About half of those who experienced binge eating—typically more severe cases—also had food addiction, according to study results. Binge eating refers to consuming significant amounts of food beyond what would be considered normal in a given situation or timeframe, accompanied by distress and a loss of control.
People with binge eating disorder often have periods of fasting or dieting to “make up” for binging. They are motivated by weight loss and body image concerns.
Food addiction and binge eating both involve unsuccessful attempts to reduce the amount of food, impulsivity, emotional dysregulation, reward dysfunction, and cravings. Emotional dysregulation means a lack of skills to handle emotions and turning to food for emotional regulation.
Both eating disorders and food addiction are associated with problems in the brain’s dopamine-related reward response. This shared neurological basis might explain why weight-loss programs often aren’t helpful for people with obesity who also struggle with food addiction.
Distinguishing among these conditions might prompt “personalized assessments and tailored treatments for this patient population,” according to the study.
Hidden Addiction
Misconceptions about food addiction also make it particularly hard to recognize. The two women’s stories illustrate common misunderstandings:
Lammert and her doctor were focused on her weight, not the type of food she ate. Although she grew up eating healthy meals and always valued real food, there were always plenty of pre-packaged, industrial-made snacks in the pantry.
For Gentile, the misconception was that she was dealing with an eating disorder, rather than an addiction, from a life of dieting and food struggles. She also became frustrated by attitudes she encountered in the medical system that food cannot be addictive or even problematic.
Food Abstinence?
Addressing food addiction in a manner similar to other addictions affords people the opportunity to be healthy, according to H. Theresa Wright, a registered dietitian at Renaissance Nutrition Center. She described food addiction as “painfully repairable but treatable.”
The backbone of food addiction eating plans is abstaining from eating sugar and flour, as well as foods causing individual sensitivities, but getting adequate nutrients, Wright, author of “The Sane Food Solution,” told The Epoch Times.
“Abstinence means you’re not using ‘drug food’ you’ve been using,” she said. “It means you focus on using something else besides food to manage your feelings,” she added. “Abstinence requires a whole lot of work. It requires spirituality, meditation, exercise, action, and making changes in your life.”
In addition to becoming convinced that certain foods are intolerable for their health, Wright said one needs to build rest into their lives. Without rest, there’s often a mindless rush that makes it easy to use food to numb or distract from feelings. However, rest offers time to reflect on emotions that might drive unhealthy food choices and build a schedule that allows for food planning and stress-reduction activities.
Gentile found support through the community aspect of ARC.
“We’re bathing our brain with messaging that this ARC community are our food people,” she said. “When it comes to how I make my food choices, I look to the other people in the ARC, not my family and friends who are eating and drinking all the things I’m trying to stay away from,” she added, noting that until she found the community, dealing with food addiction alone added struggles of sadness and loneliness.
The Food Addiction Institute maintains an online directory of additional rehabilitation and recovery programs, as well as professionals specializing in food addiction counseling.
Costs of Food Addiction
Failing to formally acknowledge food addiction is a blindspot that keeps Americans perpetually craving foods that damage their metabolic health, Joan Ifland, founder of the ARC who holds a doctorate in addictive nutrition, told The Epoch Times.
Signs of poor cardiometabolic health include obesity, Type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and heart disease.
Food addiction could explain Americans’ continued struggle with high rates of cardiometabolic disease despite medical treatments, Ifland, who co-authored the textbook “Processed Food Addiction: Foundations, Assessment, and Recovery,” added.
Breaking Free
Food addiction experts believe the solution could involve more support for overcoming cravings and changing eating habits.
Joan Ifland, founder of the Addiction Reset Community suggests six ways to overcome food addiction. Illustration by The Epoch Times
Those with a severe addiction to alcohol often need two years of treatment, according to Ifland. Getting ultra-processed food addiction under control necessitates a similar response.
“You need very high-level support. Ultra-processed foods are harmful and quite dangerous in terms of the damage they do,” she said. “You have to surround yourself with people who are not eating processed foods and have not bought into the deception.”
Expand Options
Weight loss programs that only teach calorie counting or eating in moderation can backfire for those with food addiction, potentially causing withdrawal, promoting cravings, and leading to relapses, according to a 2024 review in Current Obesity Reports. It noted that there are no evidence-based interventions for ultra-processed food addiction, but the growing number of online self-help and community-based groups show an unaddressed clinical need for help.
“There are abundant next steps in this line of research,” the authors wrote. “Developing and demonstrating the efficacy of novel, addiction-based treatments for UPF addiction may result in more optimal clinical outcomes for this underserved population.”
- Creating a food plan that works for your life dynamics. Not everyone can give up all ultra-processed food at once.
- Developing tools to help select and prepare whole foods.
- Improving sleep skills, as sleep restriction affects metabolism and can change hunger cues.
- Reframing thoughts around food with exercises like food flashcards. For instance, writing “donut” on one side and words such as “obesity, fatigue, diabetes, and high blood pressure” on the other.
- Enhancing communication skills, such as learning to express needs. For example, asking others in the home to stop leaving ultra-processed foods on the counter.
- Establishing boundaries to prevent backsliding, including skills for dealing with spoken and unspoken pressure to eat like those around you.
“You need relationship management skills because everyone in your life will perceive this as weird,” Ifland said about being in food addiction recovery. “They will try to drag you back to eating processed foods.”