Addiction is a silent killer, making its prey unaware of the amount of substance consumed by convincing them that they are doing what is needed for the body until it comes in for the kill. Addiction is defined as allowing an object to drive a person to partake in anything in order to continuously obtain that object. The effects that addiction has on the body will take over a person's life, especially if the person is not aware that they have formed the addiction until it is too late. One form of addiction in particular that this consistently happens with is food addiction. Food addiction is the fifth most common addiction in the world and takes the lives of many victims everyday. Food addiction is worse than any other addiction because the substance being abused, food, is needed to live and is easily accessible, the physical drive plays a bigger role than the mental drive, and the public looks at drugs as a bigger issue to deal with than helping food addicts.

The human body needs three simple things to live: water, oxygen, and food. The average human cannot live longer than a month without food. Food is quite frankly what keeps the human body functioning correctly, which is why food addiction is so common and so easy to form. The key factor in forming this addiction is both the amount of food as well as the toxic food that these addicts are consuming. “Deliciousness is both ingrained and learned, both personal and universal. It is a product of all five senses (hearing included) interacting in unexpected ways”. It is human nature to lean more towards flavorful foods, such as processed and unhealthy foods, rather than bland ones that tend to be the healthier options. This is because the flavorful processed foods overwhelm the body with excitement, which causes a release in endorphins in the brain and leads to the body getting hooked on that happy feeling the endorphins cause (Moyer 35).

What is not human nature, however, is the fact that many people worldwide cannot afford the healthier food options. “If you're surviving on a low income, there are not many avenues towards a healthy diet. Your options are reduced to snacks that are essentially corn drenched in oil.” Addicts in general tend to have lower income jobs because their only motivation goes towards their addictions. This also leads them to spending all of their money on their addictions. For food addicts it is the same ordeal. They spend the limited amount of money they make from their low income jobs on these mass amounts of unhealthy foods that, for the most part, they will need to survive for the rest of the month (Siegel). Other addictions are solely formed and spent off of the psychological need rather than the physical need. “Addiction is a social-cultural invention; a social construct manufactured by the culture as a means for a given goal.” All addictions, other than food addiction, have some sort of social cause. They are classified as a human phenomenon, meaning, they are not a necessity to life, but rather a result of peer pressure (Fatayer 88). It is easiest to form an addiction to food because it is a human necessity that is found on every street corner, unlike other addicting substances.

When it comes to addictions, the mind controls the body, except for when it comes to food addiction. With most addictions, it is a chemical reaction in the brain that becomes more intense the more that a substance is consumed. Even though food addiction causes the same chemical release of dopamine, the main chemical reaction that occurs is the physical one with taste receptors. “In recent years scientists have found taste receptors all over the body, discoveries that have solved some long standing mysteries...In 2007 they discovered that cells lining the small intestine also contain taste receptors.” Scientists are discovering taste receptors all over the body that support the claim that the physical drive to eat massive amounts of food rules over the mental drive. The physical drive sparks when the taste receptors become deprived and the body begins to ache from the lack of taste and consumption and cannot physically tolerate the shortage of food (Moyer 36). This withdraw reaction is not easy to prevent either. However, “if you look at the neurobiology of food addiction, people cannot simply avoid trigger foods.’ ” The taste receptors in the body become accustomed to these trigger foods, which are unhealthy processed foods the majority of the time. When these trigger foods are spotted by an addict, it causes the taste receptors to have a withdraw reaction, which is when the mental fight to resist the urges comes into play. Since the mind’s only reaction for food addicts is the release of dopamine, this mental fight becomes exhausting quickly. This quick exhaustion leads to the physical desire overcoming the decision making process and, therefore, leads to the consumption of trigger foods (Siegel). The physical urge over powering the mental drive does not occur in other addictions, however. “Thus, efforts to group addiction with chronic diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and diabetes, are misleading. Most addicts quit drugs by about the age of 30 and do so independent of treatment.” Drug addicts do not necessarily need whichever drug they are reliant on to live. Since that is the case, drug addicts have faster and more effective recovery times than food addicts (Heyman). The physical toll that food addicts have over their mentality of certain situations is what makes food addiction harder to overcome.

When the words drug addiction come to mind it is thought of as worse than food addiction. This is because of the social construct that has been formed around these two different addictions. There is not enough attention around food addiction mainly because food is not an illegal substance. “When a health condition is thought to derive from bad behavior, a character flaw, or a moral deficit, it produces a markedly different reaction than when it is thought to derive from genetic predisposition, a neurological disorder, or a medical disease.” Drug addiction is looked upon as worse than food addiction because it reflects helplessness to the public more. However, everybody has been told that any disease that is self inflicted, including food addiction, is not to receive sympathy (Richter and Foster).

This is the way health companies are trained to think as well. “Addiction is a current example of a highly prevalent disease for which attitudes about its nature as well as the health-care response to it have yet to catch up with the science.” Even though science has proven the public’s view towards addiction to be wrong, addicts are still prohibited to certain benefits. Healthcare companies are limiting important healthcare attributes to addicts and even denying healthcare as a whole to some (Richter and Foster). Even the doctors of the world are lacking expertise due to lack of sympathy towards addicts. “ ‘Food addiction is not taken seriously by health professionals in the way other addictions are," said Dr. Julie Friedman...'I'm binging three to four times per week,' they'll tell you to go to Weight Watchers.’ ” Doctors and other health service advisors are biasly giving useless health advice and preventing food addicts to get the correct care they need. They would rather tell these addicts to go to corporations wanting to make money rather than give them the care needed, unlike drug addicts who are sent to medical care facilities for months or even years (Siegel). Food addicts get all healthcare privileges taken away from them because of drug addicts, yet do not get the basic help needed to overcome addiction that drug addicts receive all because food is a basic need for life.

“It's possible that food addiction will become accepted the way drug addiction has in recent years...The problem must become personal and close in order for people to change their attitudes” (Siegel). Society will never be able to turn the spotlight back on food addiction until it is affecting them, increasing the problem as a whole. The world will constantly look over the fact that food addiction takes a bigger toll physically than mentally, forcing it to have more intense treatment than other addictions. Nobody will ever understand that just because food is a simple necessity of life that food addicts should not be punished for having an addiction or not be treated properly like drug addicts are. In today’s world, with the amount of processed food companies running the industry, people need to be more educated about the severity of food addiction to see exactly how much worse it is than any other form of addiction. Food addiction does not need to become personal to make a change.