The last stage of the addiction cycle, talked about in the section,                  “What It Is”, is preoccupation/anticipation. The aspects that drive                                 this stage of addiction are desire and reward. Our minds                                      associate one with the other, desire being the fuel for                                 reward. In the book “Unbroken Brain” by Maia Szalavitz,                                     she mentions that “Desire fuels learning, whether it is                                    normal learning or the pathological ‘overlearning’ that                              occurs in addiction.” Over time, when the human mind or                                     body desires an object or feeling, it initiates a learned                    association with the rewarding feeling that is obtained when the               object or feeling is reached. The feeling of reward, which is the key             psychological aspect of food addiction, is defined “as a stimulus that has the property of eliciting approach responses, and reinforcement, as the tendency for stimuli to strengthen learned stimulus-response tendencies” (Small 178). From extensive research about the reward sectors of the human brain, scientists have been able to gather that there are three different mannerisms that signal reward. These three layers are “(1) proximal signals associated with food consumption (e.g., taste/flavor), (2) distal signals, associated with the postingestive effects produced by nutrients, and (3) pre ingestive signals, such as visual or olfactory cues that predict the proximal and distal rewards” (Small 178). The most influential of these mannerisms for food addicts is the pre ingestive signals. In all human bodies, the pre ingestive signals are meant to “provide information about food availability and quality” (Small 180). The attributes that are categorized as pre ingestive signals are sight and smell. This is why it is so difficult for food addicts to resist addictive foods. Whenever an addictive food is seen, smelled, or even imagined, the brain remembers the feeling of reward gained by eating the addictive food. Often times, the mind remembers the feeling of reward as the taste of the food giving them that feeling, not the addictive properties of that food. Taste is able to be perceived through the next important mannerism of food addicts, proximal signals. Proximal signals “refer to the flavors of food and drink, which result from the integration of taste, oral somatosensation, and retronasal olfaction” (Small 179). However, these signals themselves do not have addictive properties. It is the association between them, the pre ingestive signals, and the replacement of the rewarding feeling that interferes with the next set of signals to create a food addict. The reason for this is because the next set of signals, the distal signals, are responsible for “pre- and postabsorptive post ingestive effects. These signals may promote or inhibit eating” (Small 180). Distal signals make it possible for our body to learn flavor nutrient conditioning, which is how our body is taught to “prefer foods that are biologically useful” (Small 180). The tastes that proximal signals perceive enable a release of dopamine, a chemical released in the brain when a pleasurable action is performed and causes a feeling of reward. Flavor nutrient conditioning is disrupted when there is an “injection of dopamine enablers into the prefrontal cortex” (Small 180). This disruption is the cause of the association made between the taste of food and the rewarding feeling that makes it possible to obsess over addictive foods when an addict even thinks about them. The aftermath of this is the first two stages of the addiction cycle that were talked about in detail in the “What It Is” section. If you have read both this section and the “What It Is” section, you now have enough understanding to read the section title “How To Stop It”, which goes in detail about how to prevent food addiction from worsening and how to get better.