I
n 2013, an undergraduate
research project suggesting
Oreos activated more of the
brain’s pleasure centers than
either cocaine or morphine set
off a storm of media attention.
However, the study was done in
rats and never directly compared
Oreos to either drug. Another
blitz of media coverage, this
time claiming cheese was as
addictive as crack cocaine, was
predicated on a study by associate
professor Ashley Gearhardt, in
the Department of Psychology
at the University of Michigan.
Ironically, Gearhardt’s study only
mentioned cheese a few times.
Bad science journalism aside,
can foods be addictive? Is food
addiction a valid behavioral health
condition?
According to the American
Society of Addiction Medicine,
addiction is a chronic brain
disease where “an individual
pathologically pursues reward
and/or relief by substance use
and other behaviors.” While this
definition is harsh upon first
reading, it is important to note
that not everyone exposed to
something
addictive
develops
an addiction. For instance, only
8 to 12 percent of people (still a
concerning statistic) who misuse
prescription opioids, e.g. taking
them not as their doctor ordered,
develop opioid use disorder. So no
need to fear, yet, Oreo lovers.
Oreos, cheese and other foods
some would label as addictive
have one thing in common: the
bliss point. The bliss point is the
right amount of salt, sugar and fat
to maximize a food’s irresistibility.
Like the tobacco companies that
genetically modify tobacco plants
to double their nicotine content,
food
companies
meticulously
design processed foods to take
advantage of our evolutionary
cravings for salt, sugar and fat for
more sales.
Anthropologists estimate that
Homo sapiens has been around for
about 300,000 years and, for a vast
majority of our species’s time on
Earth, foods high in sugar, fat and/
or salt were a luxury. Since we
need all three of those nutrients
to live, it makes sense we evolved
neural circuits that reward us
for obtaining fatty, sugary and
salty foods. Fast forward to 2018,
however, where a vast majority
of humanity gets the nutrition it
needs from these foods and you
run into a problem: We no longer
need to seek fatty, sugary and salty
foods to survive, but the neural
circuits of 300,000 years ago still
exist.
The one thing that trips people
up the most about the idea of food
addiction is the question, “How can
food be addictive if we need it to
live?” We still need fat, sugar and
salt, however, we have innumerably
more sources of these ingredients
than our ancestors did. Something
a lot of people do not realize about
drugs like marijuana is that their
addictive properties are rooted in
biology. Your body is coursing with
naturally produced chemicals that
are structurally similar to a molecule
of THC. That is why THC is able
to activate your endocannabinoid
receptors and cause the effects one
feels when smoking or eating pot.
Marijuana would get no one high if
THC was not similar to anandamide,
a brain chemical.
Why do I draw the parallel
between marijuana and food? The
brain needs a molecule to activate
the endocannabinoid receptors. Both
anandamide and THC will do the
trick, however, they are not the same.
I apply the same concept to food. We
need food, yes. However, an Oreo and
a cucumber are not created equal nor
should they be treated as such.
In my conversations with people
at the School of Public Health’s
Department of Nutritional Sciences, I
have observed that people readily fall
squarely into the “yes, food addiction
exists” and “no, food addiction does
not exist.” I have already presented
arguments for the former, but what
about the latter camp?
The most consistent and cogent
argument I hear against food
addiction as a concept is that it is
seen as conflicted with the “intuitive
model of eating.” Intuitive eating is
all about learning to respect your
internal cues for eating, such as
fullness, and rejecting external cues
like diet culture. This model also
maintains that no food is a bad food.
On face value, the idea of addictive
foods flies in the face of intuitive
eating. It’s an external cue that makes
some food “bad.”
I respect this argument and the
intuitive model of eating, however,
I believe the conflict is rooted in
misunderstanding, not fundamental
incompatibility. We label drugs of
abuse like opioids and cocaine
as “bad” and the dominance of
Alcoholics Anonymous and its
cousin Narcotics Anonymous in
the addiction treatment world lead
many to believe that abstinence is
the only treatment for addiction.
If that were the case, then we
would tell people to avoid certain
foods which could be addictive,
which as I said before, goes
against intuitive eating. While AA
and NA have done worlds of good,
their total abstinence mindset is
E
very day, I walk
out my front door,
and turn to lock
it behind me. I cross the
front porch, take the four
steps to the sidewalk, and
turn
left
up
Benjamin
Street as it curves into
Mary Street. I take a left
on Packard Street and a
right on Hill Street and
walk up the steps to the
Weill Hall, where I have
most of my classes.
I do this walk every day, at
least twice a day, oftentimes
more. As the semester has
slowly seeped away I have
taken this path in Birkenstocks,
Blundstones, snow boots and
high heels. On the way, I have
listened to music and podcasts
or chatted with a friend as we
strode shoulder to shoulder.
These four short blocks have
seen
me
content,
anxious,
stressed
and
triumphant. I
usually find myself lost in
thought, concerned for a friend,
thinking about the weekend’s
plans or pondering how I’ll ever
get all my work done that day.
I feel as though the weight
of all that contact has worn a
path along the pavement that
exactly matches the length
of my stride and the contours
of my feet, like the concrete’s
muscle memory has come to
expect me. I had a similar
sensation last year on my daily
walk to class along Oakland
Avenue, and my freshman year
as I crossed in front of Mosher-
Jordan Residence Hall and
along the bridge beside the
Central
Campus
Recreation
Building each day, winding
around the Ruthven Natural
History Museum. I spent a
lot of time on each of those
routes, engendering a feeling
of nostalgia when I walk them
now.
Over Thanksgiving break, my
family and I drove past our old
house, where I spent the first six
years of my life. As we wound
along the strangely familiar
roads, I could practically feel
my head resting against my
little car seat, knowing my dad
would pick me up and piggyback
me to bed once we got home.
I imagine I’ll find that same
comfortable familiarity in 10
years when I return to campus,
carrying with me a completely
different life, with different
worries and a new soundtrack,
walking these old routes and
re-familiarizing myself with
the shape of my
younger stride.
When I was
16,
I
spent
a
summer
studying
in
a
program
in
England.
It was only a
month, but I
made
some
wonderful
friends
and
became enamored with the
city and University of Oxford.
I
remember
crying
as
I
prepared to leave, lugging my
overstuffed
suitcase
across
the dormitory threshold and
waving goodbye to my new
closest friends. On my way
to the airport, we zig-zagged
through
the
now-familiar
streets and hills. As we did
so, I wrote, “Throughout our
lives we nestle into pockets
of comfort, pockmarking the
globe
with
our
memories,
notches of home that lay vacant
when we leave, as only our
bodies can fill them perfectly.”
By that point in my life, I
had a lot of these pockets. I had
school, camp and my family
home. I had my cousin’s living
room in Toronto and friends’
houses in Cleveland. I had the
theater rehearsal room, the
student newspaper lab and the
park where the soccer team
practiced.
Now,
five
years
later,
my
imprint
portfolio
has
expanded. But I have the
benefit of something I didn’t
have at 16: a little distance.
The next summer I returned
to Oxford as a tourist, eager to
show the friends with whom
I was traveling the city I had
come to adore, waiting to fill
once again the little me-shaped
notch I had left behind. It
was a fun day. We went to my
favorite Indian restaurant and
ice cream shop. We walked the
same roads I had walked every
day that summer. We even
returned to my dorm, crossing
the threshold through which
I’d dragged my suitcase my last
morning in England.
I spent all day trying to fill
up the little crevice I’d left
behind, but found I couldn’t
quite fit. I could practically feel
the dent, running my fingers
around its edges as we strolled
through town and by a beloved
bookstore. I could sense it as we
smelled the fryers bubbling in
my favorite chip shop. But I was
a different shape than I’d been
the summer before. Parts had
been stretched, parts refined
and some parts had been
moved around or discarded
altogether. It was bittersweet
to find so tangibly all the ways
in which I was now somehow
different.
My column this semester
has been all about reaching
back to feel the edges of these
indentations,
relearning
their contours and finding
comfort
in
the
inevitable
swell of nostalgia. It’s been
an introspective journey that
has forced me to recognize
the transience of these few
years in college that we are all
experiencing together. There is
a lingering frustration still left
over from that day in Oxford.
The idea of recapturing a long
lost feeling is tantalizing, but
probably fruitless.
The only thing we can do
is leave the highest quality
imprint possible. As I walk
to class each day I try to
do so mindfully, not always
allowing myself to wander
off in thought but rather
make a point to feel the
temperature on my skin and
smile at strangers I pass. I try
to recognize the shape I am
making on the world around
me so maybe I can feel it more
genuinely when I return one
day. We are always told that
college will be some of the
best years of our lives. So we
should stretch as far as we
can, making impressions all
throughout campus, leaving
the shape of ourselves up and
down Ann Arbor. The more
we do, the more memories we
make, and the more we have to
look back on years from now,
smiling against the grain of a
bittersweet nostalgia — grateful
for the many places in the world
we can call home.
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Wednesday, December 5, 2018
Emma Chang
Ben Charlson
Joel Danilewitz
Michael Russo
Dana Pierangeli
Tara Jayaram
Jeremy Kaplan
Magdalena Mihaylova
Ellery Rosenzweig
Jason Rowland
Anu Roy-Chaudhury
Alex Satola
Ali Safawi
Ashley Zhang
Reid Diamond
DAYTON HARE
Managing Editor
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
tothedaily@michigandaily.com
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.
ALEXA ST. JOHN
Editor in Chief
ANU ROY-CHAUDHURY AND
ASHLEY ZHANG
Editorial Page Editors
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board.
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
ALI SAFAWI | COLUMN
Oreos, cheese and other hard drugs
Footsteps and imprints
KENDALL HECKER | COLUMN
Ali Safawi can be reached at
asafawi@umich.edu.
Kendall Hecker can be reached at
kfhecker@umich.edu.
A
bombshell
report
was
dropped
over
Thanksgiving. The Fourth
National
Climate
Assessment
provided
perhaps
the
most
detailed scientific assessment of
how climate change is going to
impact every area of our lives.
Produced by a confederation of
13 federal agencies, including
NASA,
the
Department
of
Defense, National Oceanic and
Atmospheric
Administration,
National
Science
Foundation,
U.S. Department of Agriculture
and more, it details societal
response strategies to mitigate
and adapt to the effects of global
climate change. Projected effects
include massive declines in crop
yield, sea-level rise that threatens
millions, devastating wildfires
and billions of dollars of economic
losses every year. All of this
will destabilize food and social
systems we rely upon, which will
exacerbate conditions leading to
war and mass migration. Almost
every national and international
scientific body on the planet has
converged around this reality,
pointing to climate change as
the largest impending disaster
humankind has ever faced, and
urging rapid action.
The advantage of a global
scientific consensus is that we also
have a roadmap to avoid these
catastrophic effects and a metric
to gauge our progress. The NCA
reaffirms that avoiding the most
damaging
effects
requires
us
to limit warming to 1.5 degrees
Celsius, and a report released by the
International
Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change in
October indicates that achieving
this will necessitate global carbon
neutrality by 2050. This is still
technically feasible, but it requires
dramatic and immediate action.
Unfortunately,
we
at
the
University of Michigan have a lot
of catching up to do. Universities
are particularly well placed to act
on climate: They have the means
to understand the science, are not
subject to the same quarterly focus
as private institutions and have a
stated mission to “serve the people.”
In spite of this, the University has
been woefully negligent when
it comes to climate action — our
emissions
reduction
goals
are
among the very bottom of Big Ten
institutions, we lack a climate
action plan, our administration
refused to divest from fossil fuels
despite broad community support
and we have yet to join any of the
large national coalitions (such as
the University Climate Change
Coalition or Climate Leadership
Network) that help universities
and their communities to become
more sustainable. It has been noted
in the press how badly we compare
to
Michigan
State
University,
which is highlighted in the NCA
for generating 5 percent of their
energy locally via solar carports,
and to The Ohio State University,
which is 10th in the Environmental
Protection Agency’s list of the top
30
green-powered
universities
and which committed to carbon
neutrality 10 years ago. University
President Mark Schlissel’s own
Greenhouse
Gas
Reduction
Committee recommended back in
2015 that the University commit to
much more ambitious targets and
detailed specific ways to achieve
such targets, but three years later,
little has changed.
We can and must do better.
The U-M community is filled with
knowledgeable
and
passionate
individuals, but climate change is
an issue that we can only tackle if
we work together, and we need bold
leadership to focus our collective
efforts. In a sign of hope, Schlissel
announced in October that he
was committed to “putting U-M
on a trajectory towards carbon
neutrality,” along with his intention
to form a commission that would
be “tasked with developing our
plan.” But for this commission to
be effective, Schlissel must commit
to a defined, science-based date
for carbon neutrality. In a detailed
letter to Schlissel, the Climate Action
Movement at U-M (of which I am
a part) has urged him to commit
the University to achieving carbon
neutrality by 2035, a goal in keeping
with the IPCC timeline. This puts a
firm date with a tangible outcome to
the pledge that Schlissel has already
made to pursue efforts to limit
warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as
laid out in the 2015 Paris agreement,
and also reposition the University
community as leaders in the fight
against climate change.
Without a specific date, the
commission’s
mandate
remains
frighteningly vague and we will lose
valuable time as they debate what
their mandate even is, let alone how to
develop a plan to achieve it. It will be
far too easy for the commission to set
the bar low and fall back on Schlissel’s
qualification that such a plan must
be “financially responsible,” an
excuse for inaction that is all too
familiar to a younger generation
that has seen its future grossly
and
systematically
undervalued.
While there is a consensus that
aggressive climate action now will
be far cheaper than if it is delayed,
the necessary investments in our
future will still be substantial, and
we will need the mandate of a public
commitment from the highest levels
of the University in order to sustain
momentum.
Schlissel rightly calls climate
change “the defining scientific and
social problem of our age.” Beyond
the science we produce, the
greatest asset that the University
has to offer in the fight against
climate change is bold and public
leadership. Even though we at
the University produce nearly a
third of Ann Arbor’s emissions,
Schlissel is right that simply
becoming carbon neutral will
not alone make a significant
difference for climate change. The
University’s impact — our impact
— will only be meaningful if it is
public and if it is ambitious. We
must put to rest the notion that
the necessary changes are simply
too difficult or impractical. We
can be what we have claimed to
be all along: Leaders and the Best.
The world needs leaders right
now, and with some of the world’s
greatest minds, a commitment
to serve the public good and
an endowment larger than the
economies of one-third of the world’s
nations, no one is better positioned to
lead than we are. I hope we do, and
Time to lead on climate
NOAH WEAVERDYCK | OP-ED
Noah Weaverdyck is a Ph.D.
candidate in Physics and a member of
the Climate Action Movement at U-M
MAECY LIGHTHALL | CONTACT EMILY AT MAECYL@UMICH.EDU
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
The only thing we
can do is leave the
highest quality
imprint possible
Our impact will
only be meaningful
if it is public and
ambitious
KENDALL
HECKER