030320 Fast Food 'Addiction' Feeds Only Lawyers

Is ''hamburger addiction'' like ''heroin addiction?'' Will fast-food chains become the next tobacco industry, forced to charge patrons extra to eat burgers, as smokers now pay premium prices to buy cigarettes?

Such implausible ideas got a boost recently in the respected British weekly New Scientist, which detailed ''new and potentially explosive findings . . . that eating yourself into obesity isn't simply (due) to a lack of self-control.''

As a psychiatrist who specializes in treating conventional drug addicts and alcoholics, I find the claims flatly offensive. But unfortunately lawyers don't. A legal summit is scheduled in June at Northeastern University to plan legal strategies for ''attacking obesity.''

George Washington University law professor John Banzhaf, a key architect of tobacco litigation, already has connected obesity and addiction.

''Addiction as a concept was a breakthrough in terms of successful tobacco litigation,'' Banzhaf told me. ''With growing evidence that fatty foods can have addiction-like effects, this will be a new, untested weapon in obesity suits.''

On his Web site, Banzhaf cites the experiments described by New Scientist. Rats fed diets high in fat and sugar exhibited changes in brain neurotransmitters typically associated with using drugs such as heroin.

The only ones who should salivate at this are lawyers who stand to collect hefty fees if juries buy the line that high-fat food is as habit forming as heroin.

Elastic definitions

It is true that people can ''crave'' pizza as they might a cigarette, that they feel weak and shaky when calories (or heroin) ''wear off'' and that they sometimes consume fries (or cocaine) compulsively. But these facile comparisons tell us little about the nature of overeating. Instead, they show how the term ''addiction'' can be stretched until it becomes meaningless.

Virtually every pleasure we encounter -- listening to beautiful music, sex, even exercise -- is associated with surges of dopamine similar to those during a high-fat meal. But we call these pleasures, not addictions. Scientists cannot look at dopamine levels or brain scans and tell the difference.

Desire vs. action

When cocaine addicts, for example, are shown drug paraphernalia (a crack pipe or lines of white powder on a mirror), they experience craving, and their pleasure centers (unsurprisingly) light up on PET scans, which capture images of brain activity.

Those images, however, tell us little about whether the brain's owner is compelled to act on his desire. When researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital presented pictures of pretty women to heterosexual men, their pleasure centers also lit up brightly on PET scans. But the men did not rush out to have sex.

Arizona State University psychologist William Uttal calls imaging technologies ''the new phrenology'' after the 19th-century practice of using bumps on the head to decipher a person's abilities and character. Today's brain-imaging techniques, while not quackery, rarely permit scientists to predict behavior, he says.

The effects of true addiction are far more devastating than the results of too many Happy Meals. In my drug-treatment clinic, I see a daily parade of battered men and women who have lost their families, jobs and homes. Many are infected with HIV/AIDS and hepatitis. There is no comparison between these casualties of addiction and kids who eat too much.

The kids, however, could learn from my addicts. I've seen recovering addicts and alcoholics fight their cravings through sheer willpower -- even though, if we put them in PET scanners, we would doubtless find their brains lit up like Christmas trees.

The word ''addiction'' is perilously close to losing any meaning. If lawyers can turn fast food into an addiction and pin liability on restaurants, it won't be long before adulterers sue Sports Illustrated, claiming its swimsuit issue led them astray.

Fast food addiction? The addiction we really need weaning from is spurious litigation.

Sally Satel, is staff psychiatrist at the Oasis Clinic in Washington, D.C., and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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