Diet, Craving and Food Addiction (Adult Population)

This 2018 review presents the multifactorial social, neurobehavioral, and metabolic determinants of food intake that influence obesity risk to promote food craving and excessive food intake. The determinants included rewarding foods that stimulate brain reward motivation and stress circuits to influence eating behaviors, as well as stress hormones that hijack the brain’s emotional (limbic) and motivational (striatal) pathways. Sinha (2018) discusses the impact of high-stress levels and trauma, in addition to metabolic alterations such as higher weight, and altered insulin sensitivity, on self-control processes that regulate emotional, motivational, and visceral homeostatic mechanisms of food intake and obesity risk. Also reviewed was the potentially positive interaction between dynamic effects of neurobehavioral adaptations in metabolic, motivation, and stress neurobiology with food craving, excessive food intake, and weight gain. The author highlights key areas that require future investigation to adequately comprehend and address this growing obesity epidemic.