Junk food is like heroin

Data presented at the annual Society for Neuroscience conference showed that bacon, cheesecake, and Ho Hos activated rat brain pleasure centers in similar ways to that of addictive drugs:

To see how strong the drive to eat junk food was, the researchers exposed the rats to a foot shock when they ate the high-fat food. Rats that had not been constantly exposed to the junk food quickly stopped eating. But the foot shock didn’t faze rats accustomed to the junk food — they continued to eat, even though they knew the shock was coming.

What's perhaps most disturbing about this research--other than force-feeding rats Ho Hos like John Doe fed spaghetti to the glutton sinner in Seven--is the long duration of time it took to break the addictive cycle after the junk food-feeding ceased. There's some hard-wiring going on that is really tough to shift back to normal. These findings could really point to some interesting research that focuses on synaptic circuitry and sugar/LDL intake at various points in development, particularly in the first two years of life when neuronal development is most massive.