My Name is Rosanne and ...

no, this is not the introduction portion of a 12 step meeting in the blogosphere.  Or maybe it is?  I have known for a long time that certain aspects of my eating behaviors look an awful lot like what I understand an addiction to be.  One of the best explanations of an addiction that I have ever heard is that an addict engages in behavior that they clearly know intellectually is detrimental, but continues to do so.  This past week, a work colleague and my sister-in-law both sent me media coverage of a study just published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, "Neural Correlates of Food Addiction."

The reporting source from my sister-in-law's forward is MedPage where Kristina Fiore reports in brief and elegant simplicity: 

• "Women with addictive-like eating behaviors appear to have neural activity on function magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) similar to that of substance abusers.
• Whether eating food or craving it, food lovers appear to have neural activity similar to that of substance abusers." 

She goes on to point out the small-print disclaimers, including the small sample size and the exclusion of men from the study. 

I do not need an expensive imaging test to reveal what I already know about myself and my own behavior.   But there is an element of comfort in knowing that making bad food choices is not totally a matter of 'mind over matter'.