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Professional Conferences
A number of professional conferences have either convened conferences specially for food addiction, or have hosted a symposium on the topic.
Conferences on Food Addiction
Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity This conference was attended by 40 researchers and moderated by directors of prominent research centers such as Brookhaven Research Institute, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, National Institutes of Health, McKnight Brain Institute, and Center for Obesity Assessment and Treatment, University of California. The quotes are from the report published at the Center’s website. As can be seen, this group supports the concept that food addiction is valid and important and it uses the term, ‘food addiction field.’
“The group was in agreement that food addiction is a valid component of understanding obesity….researchers should pay more attention to the relationship between drugs of abuse and obesity….The work that has been done in the food addiction field should be translated into lay terms and summarized into short position papers and fact sheets for policymakers”
Satellite Meeting on Food Reward Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior Cincinnati, Ohio 2004 The Symposium was funded by a Conference Grant made by the National Institutes of Health. The presentations and discussion from this symposium (1) identified changes in neurotransmitter dynamics and gene expression in brain "reward circuits" accompanying learning of behaviors to obtain palatable foods or drugs of abuse; (2) analyzed behavioral findings in animals and humans, and neuroimaging data in humans, supporting treatment with GABA(B) agonists to reduce craving for drugs of abuse and possibly for highly rewarding foods; and (3) used neuroimaging data in humans to establish novel serotonergic targets for normalizing reward processes and impulse control in anorexia nervosa and bulimia. Overall, the symposium clearly revealed our rapidly broadening understanding of the alterations in the brain at the molecular, cellular and systems levels that are associated with craving and nonhomeostatic consumption of food and drugs of abuse. This knowledge gained largely in animal models translates to novel and better strategies for treating human patients. (Simansky 2005)
Symposiums within Professional Conferences
American Society of Addiction Medicine, Toronto, Canada 2008 Are Overeating and Obesity Addictions? Current Research and Treatment Impact. Symposium Description: Addiction or dependence has been defined and re-defined after the cocaine epidemic. Tolerance and withdrawal, once the hallmarks of addiction have been replaced by pathological attachment and acquire drive. Most experts would recognize that this important change in the definition of dependence has made it possible to consider compulsive gambling and also sexual compulsivity as addictive diseases. Co-occurring addictive, gambling, and sexual disorders have been noted by researchers and clinicians. Treatment of compulsive gambling and also sexual compulsivity is strikingly similar to treatment of addiction and the providers tend to be ASAM and other addiction treatment experts. For overeating, obesity and addictions, theory has followed a similar history. Recent basic and clinical research using a variety of methods including public health, fMRI, PET, neuroanatomical, neuropharmacological, anthropological, phenomenological, have suggested striking similarities between obesity and addiction. Pathological attachment to food, especially food with hedonic properties, and overeating are a cause of obesity. This expert panel will present the current state of the research data and nosological arguments. (American Society of Addiction Medicine 2008)
The International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals (IAEDP), Orlando, Florida 2008 Presentation by Mark Gold, MD, “Globesity: Worldwide Epidemic, Addiction Models and New Treatments Plenary Session”
American Society for Nutritional Sciences. The Society hosted a Symposium entitled Sugar and Fat-From Genes to Culture given at the Experimental Biology ’02 Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana April 29, 2002. The report for this Symposium noted, “…studies now show that sustained consumption of sweet and high fat foods can lead to neurochemical changes in brain sites involved in feeding and reward. In other words, sustaine dietary behavior can have permanent consequences in the brain.”
John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business, Harvard Law School
Lecture presented at the Law and Economics Seminar, October 21, 2003 Conceptualizing the “Fat Tax”: The Role of Food Taxes in Developed Economies
Taught by Professors Louis Kaplow and Steven Shavell. This seminar argued for a fat tax based on the addictive properties of food.