Ok, I’ve been there… chocolate cake in front of me. Fully aware that I’m stuffed beyond capacity and then… it tastes so damn gooooood, I’ll just have one more bite… I think we’ve all been there, and we’ve all heard people say that cheesecake is like crack; you know it’s bad for you, but you just. can’t. stop.

Apparently science agrees! A recent study published Nature Neuroscience looked at the brain chemistry of rats who were fed a high fat diet of (literally) bacon, sausage, cheesecake, pound cake, frosting and chocolate and found that they reacted to this food in the same way that a drug addict reacts to cocaine or heroin.

David Kessler, author of the book “The End of Overeating” explains it like this in an interview for the Washington Post: “”Highly palatable” foods — those containing fat, sugar and salt — stimulate the brain to release dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with the pleasure center, he found. In time, the brain gets wired so that dopamine pathways light up at the mere suggestion of the food, such as driving past a fast-food restaurant, and the urge to eat the food grows insistent. Once the food is eaten, the brain releases opioids, which bring emotional relief. Together, dopamine and opioids create a pathway that can activate every time a person is reminded about the particular food. This happens regardless of whether the person is hungry.”

What doesn’t help the situation is that food manufacturers know exactly how to target the pleasure centers of your brain by either chemically altering the food, or by jacking up the fat, sugar, and salt content. The food industry spends millions of dollars on research to figure out just how to tap into our heads to create things like Lay’s Potato Chips – the ones with the slogan “betcha can’t eat just one!”. So true. This bascially amounts to food companies creating products with the aim of manipulating behavior, for their benefit of course, not ours. The result? Binge eating and in many cases, obesity.

So what are we to do? Do we never eat cheesecake or Lay’s potato chips? In a way, yes, and in a way, no. Deprivation diets will never work – the siren call of that longed for food will always be wailing in the background. At a certain point, you’ll cave, and when you do, it’ll be big. Part of what Kessler suggests is a change in perspective. Knowing that these foods are designed to make us feel a certain way (brain says good, body says bad), and that’s its done purely to line the pockets of food companies, not for our well being, we should try to see these items for what they are: lies. Is that harsh? Maybe, but in all honesty, that’s how I see them. They are not food. They are not natural. And they are manufactured in a way to give us a false sense of pleasure. So we work on shifting our perspective and come to see these things as non-food items.

Getting rid of cheescake? That sucks, I know. But this is the best part: when you DO want to have a piece of cheesecake, find one made with the absolute best quality whole food ingredients, not a crappy junk food Cheesecake Factory version. You want zero preservatives, zero additives. Better yet, make one yourself and share it with others. Indulging in these treats on occasion with preserve that delicate relationship between great food and dopamine and will never let it get to the “burnout” stage where you need more and more just to feel good.

I currently have a huge vat of coconut chocolate chip bread pudding cooling on my stove-top. You can bet that I’ll be pawning it off on friends for days!