Processed Foods Found to Be as Addictive as Drugs

Hey Mister, can you help me out?  I need a fix.  Can you lend me for a Big Mac?

In a newly released study, the Scripps Institute in Florida has concluded something we all sorta suspected:  junk food may be as addictive as cocaine.  In the study, researchers monitored the brain activity of rats given unlimited access to foods like cheesecake and bacon.  The rats ate voraciously and quickly became obese, even ignoring electrical shocks meant to dissuade them, while the pleasure centers in their brains lit up like Vegas at 1AM.  When the junk was replaced with healthier options, the rats stopped eating altogether and starved themselves for 2 weeks.  Said Dr. Gene-Jack Wang of Brookhaven Laboratory, “processed foods are designed to trigger preferences for fats, sugar and salt; we make our food very similar to cocaine now.”

Meanwhile, your life insurance company thinks you look pretty phat as an addicted lab rat. Or so says the Harvard Medical School.  They just released a study of their own that concludes that the top 11 companies offering life, disability or health insurance own about $1.9Billion worth of stock of the top 5 fast food companies.  If true, insurers are betting on customers’ health through long-term premiums, while they are profiting from customers’ – dare we say it? – addiction to junk food.

“NOT TRUE!” argued the insurance industry spokesfolks.  They claim to own WAY less fast food stock than the study suggests, and only through index funds, the composition of which they don’t control.  But the stridency of their reaction is bringing back painful memories of a previous episode, when insurance companies were criticized for charging high premiums to smokers, while profiting from tobacco company stocks.  Looks like we may be having a relapse of Insurance-Addiction-Gate.

Back at the first study, there aren’t any spin-doctors attacking its validity or its applicability to humans.  And fast-food flacks are quick to point out that the new health care legislation requires them to post the nutritional content of everything on their menus.  So people can make informed dining decisions.

When pressed for comment, rat # 2374 said, through a mouthful of chocolate pudding, “Go away, I’m getting high.”