How can we tell where a penchant for sweet treats ends and a serious food addiction begins? Photo / 123rf
When does a penchant for sweet treats become something more serious? One psychologist who battled the condition herself shares the red flags.
If a well-intentioned colleague brings in a homemade cake to celebrate a birthday, are you someone who can enjoy a slice and then move on with your day? Or are you someone who, faced with the sight, scent and taste of the sugar-filled sponge, feels an uncontrollable urge to eat? First the cake, then a chocolate bar from the office vending machine, followed by a packet of biscuits stealthily consumed in the car on the way home.
For decades Dr Jen Unwin, a clinical psychologist, battled this uncontrollable urge to eat – what she now identifies as a food addiction. When she was in her early 40s – at the start of a successful career in the UK NHS, happily married to David, a GP, and a mother to three young children – her food addiction was at its worst. Even the tiniest taste of cake or chocolate would set off uncontrollable cravings. She was overtaken by an irresistible urge to keep returning to the dessert table until she felt sick. The next day she would feel hopeless about ever controlling what she ate. There was simply no middle ground.
Research shows there are six million adults in the UK facing a battle similar to Unwin’s: addicted to ultra-processed, sugary and carb-heavy foods and, as a result, putting themselves at risk of heart problems, Type 2 diabetes, mental health issues, high blood pressure and obesity.
Unwin believes that acknowledging her challenging relationship with food as an addiction was the first step in taking control of her eating. Now, she’s completely cured and is campaigning for it to be internationally recognised as a substance use disorder and treated with the same seriousness as alcohol, smoking or drugs. She believes it is the hardest addiction to overcome.
So how can we tell where a penchant for sweet treats ends and a serious food addiction begins? Unwin highlights the key signs and says that there may be a problem if you resonate with three or more:
1. Certain foods are impossible to resist
“You’re thinking about a certain food and craving it so badly that you have a compulsion to eat it that feels impossible to resist,” Unwin says. At the height of her addiction, when David and her children were out of the house, she often made a batch of cake mixture – butter, sugar and flour – and ate the entire thing raw. “It sounds ridiculous now but I had such intense cravings for sweet, soft, sugary foods,” she explains.
2. You’re always reaching for more cake
“If you start having a glass of wine with dinner every night, your tolerance builds and soon you’ll need two glasses or three to feel the same level of tipsy,” Dr Unwin says. “The same is true with food addiction. One slice of cake might have cut it in the beginning, but now you need two or three or even half the cake to really get that dopamine hit.” She recalls her daughter’s wedding, where she initially ate a small slice of cake at the reception, and then spent the rest of the night returning to the dessert table until she felt sick.
3. Food is prioritised above all else
A common factor in addiction, you begin to ignore what you once valued and prioritise food above socialising, hobbies, family time and even work. Often, Unwin would leave the house and her family in secret to drive for 20 minutes to a cinema complex where she would order a big tub of Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough ice cream with chocolate sauce. She’d go back to her car and eat the entire portion, feeling ashamed and elated at the same time, before returning home an hour later as if nothing had happened.
4. There are times when you can’t stop yourself from eating
“You completely lose control,” Unwin says. “Perhaps you bought a packet of biscuits for your grandchildren and think you’ll sit down with a cup of tea and eat one or two before they arrive. However, before you know it, you’ve lost control of the amount and eaten the entire pack.”
5. You get headaches and feel low when you stop eating sugar
If you try to cut down on the sugary snacks and carbohydrates, do you suffer from withdrawal symptoms? “These include headaches, migraines, gastrointestinal symptoms, low mood, anxiety, fatigue and brain fog,” Unwin says. “As people experience sugar withdrawal, they feel so bad that they just go back to eating it.” When Unwin completely abstained from sugar, she experienced many of the above symptoms for eight days. However, after working through that incredibly difficult period, she began feeling better than ever.
6. You know the food is damaging you – and you don’t care
“This is the really defining one,” Unwin says. “It’s continuing to eat these foods despite knowing they’re damaging you and causing harm.” She references a patient with Type 2 diabetes who continues to binge on cake and sugar knowing how bad it is for their blood sugar. “They can’t stop themselves. These people often know that the food is worse for them than the mental symptoms of cutting it out, but they’re trapped in a cycle.”