DR. MICHAEL MOSLEY: I’m addicted to sugary junk food – and this is how I deal with it

Despite what I know and say about the health effects of junk food, there are certain foods that I can’t stop eating once I start eating them – they are chips, chocolate and cookies.

If there is a pack of cookies in the house, I don’t eat one or two, I scoff at them.

And as for milk chocolate, well, there are times I’ve broken up an entire bar and thrown it in a trash can to stop myself from eating it—only to dig into it minutes later.

A particular low point was when I ate my then six-year-old daughter’s Easter egg. She is now 23, but she still hasn’t forgiven me.

The idea that you can be “addicted” to food has been controversial – with arguments against that food doesn’t change brain function the way alcohol or drugs do.

But a team from the University of Michigan in the US recently argued in the journal Addiction that highly processed sugary foods such as ice cream, chocolate, donuts and cookies must be just as addictive as tobacco.

And that’s because some foods, like cigarettes, produce intense cravings and cravings, to the point where you keep eating them even though you know they increase your risk of life-threatening diseases like type 2 diabetes and increased heart disease.

The researchers also point out that highly processed foods can cause brain changes similar to those caused by nicotine.

A friend of mine, dr. Chris van Tulleken, had a similar thing happen when he followed a month-long diet of 80 percent highly processed foods for a BBC documentary.

His diet included foods such as cocoa-flavored cereal, chicken nuggets and microwavable lasagna.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he gained 15lbs (over a stone), but he also found himself craving more and more junk food.

And scans showed that eating all that junk in that short time had literally rewired his brain—there were many new neural pathways, many connecting the reward centers and the cerebellum, an area that controls automatic behavior.

It seems that his new diet has reprogrammed him to seek out and eat even more of these unhealthy foods on autopilot. That’s good news if you’re a food producer, but not so good news for the rest of us.

If you accept that some foods are addictive, what are the worst culprits?

In 2015, another University of Michigan study asked 120 college students to fill out the Yale Food Addiction Scale (a measure of how addictive you find a particular food) and rank 35 foods according to how addictive each food is to them .

Not surprisingly, chocolate tops the list of “most addictive foods,” followed by ice cream, fries, pizza, cookies, chips, cake, buttered popcorn, and cheeseburgers.

Somewhere in the middle was cheese, bacon and nuts, and at the bottom was salmon, brown rice, cucumber and broccoli.

So what do addictive foods have in common?

Well, for one, they’re highly processed, designed to be absorbed quickly, and give your brain an almost instant boost of dopamine (a brain chemical associated with reward). They are also a mixture of fats and carbohydrates.

And not any old mix. Roughly speaking, whether it’s chocolate or chips, cake or cheeseburgers, they’re all about 1g fat to 2g carbs.

A relationship that we humans seem to find particularly irresistible.

To see if you’re “addicted” to a certain food, try my quiz (right), adapted from the Yale Food Addiction Scale.

So what can you do if you’re addicted to sugary junk food?

The first thing to do is make sure you don’t have any in the house or you’ll crack it and eat it.

Then look for alternatives that can at least partially satisfy your cravings; I found that switching from milk chocolate to dark chocolate helps a bit because I still get the chocolate hit but less sugar and it makes it less flavorless.

I also find that eating an apple or pear can sometimes satisfy that sweet craving.

Another trick I use is “craving surfing,” which makes cravings go away. The urge to surf means I try to put it out rather than trying to fight it by drinking a tall glass of water, breathing deeply and trying to focus on other things. It usually takes me about 30 minutes to regain control.

Seek support from family and friends. I’m lucky that my wife Clare doesn’t have a sweet tooth. So when we get a box of chocolates, she either gives them away or gives away the chocolates in meager quantities.

Finally, when I don’t sleep, I crave sugary carbs like crazy.

In a study published earlier this year in the journal Sleep, nearly 100 teenagers were asked to reduce their sleep to 6.5 hours a night for a week. During that week, they ate far more sugary, high-carbohydrate foods than usual, perhaps because they were unconsciously looking for a quick burst of energy to keep them going.

So again, the message is to make sure you get enough sleep.

ARE YOU ADDICTED TO CERTAIN FOODS?

Answer the following questions. More than three “yes” answers and you could be in trouble.

1. Once I start eating these foods, I can’t stop and end up eating way more than I intended.

2. I keep eating these foods even when I’m not hungry anymore.

3. I crave this food when I’m stressed.

4. If it is not in the house, I go to the nearest store that sells it.

5. I hide this food so that even those close to me won’t know how much I eat.

6. Eating it causes anxiety and feelings of self-loathing and guilt.

7. Even though I don’t like eating it anymore, I keep doing it.

8. I tried to give up this food but couldn’t.

Hearing birdsong can improve your mood

As it gets colder, wetter and darker, I make an extra effort to go for a walk in the morning. It helps that we have a dog, Tari, who gets excited when I walk up to the front door.

Walking, especially in green, is really good for your mental and physical health.

In Japan, where I recently filmed, they have a concept of “shinrin-yoku,” or forest bathing—spending time in woods and forests, taking in the sights, sounds, and smells to relieve stress.

You will also benefit from inhaling phytoncides, essential oils produced by trees that strengthen our immune system.

Another benefit is seeing and hearing birds.

Where I live, many beautiful Red kites fly through the sky with their distinctive meowing call.

When I see her, my heart beats faster and it seems I’m not alone. More than 1,200 people participated in a recent study on the mental health effects of birds.

Using an app developed by researchers from King’s College London, the volunteers reported whether they could see or hear birds and answered questions about their psychological well-being.

The study showed that bird life can affect our feelings, especially in people with depression.

Another good reason to put on the rain boots and explore nature.

Nits are an age-old problem

Our children are grown and out of the house and I miss them around me.

What I don’t miss are the friends they brought with them from elementary school. I’m talking about head lice.

This reminded me of a recent study by archaeologists in Israel, which revealed that on an ivory comb from more than 3,000 years ago were these immortal lines: “May this tusk exterminate the lice from the hair and beard .”

The oldest known phrase, written in the world’s first alphabet, appears to be a guide to getting rid of head lice.

Archaeologists know that the comb was actually used for this purpose because it had nits between its teeth.

There are many specific remedies to combat head lice, but a study by researchers at Ghent University Hospital in Belgium showed that a regular shower, a comb and patience are your best weapons.

If you’re worried that robots will one day take over the world, you might find it comforting to know that even the most sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) systems sometimes need a nap.

We humans need sleep to consolidate our memories — but it turns out that a new breed of AI called Spiking Neural Networks, which closely resembles how the human brain works, also needs downtime when learning and remembering want to remember.

Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US have shown that if they don’t get “the equivalent of a good night’s sleep”, they become unstable.

The researchers suspect this will also apply to androids and other AI machines developed in the future.