EAT YOUR HEART OUT? –
June 15, 2023 – Despite its apparent prevalence, food addiction hasn’t been officially recognized as a real addiction, disorder or diagnosis in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the handbook used by health care professionals as the authoritative guide to diagnosing mental disorders.
The body of research on food addiction has only recently gotten to the point where it can support a proposal for inclusion in the DSM, Gearhardt said, but she’s currently working on one she expects to submit within the year.
“If you simply just look at the studies, they’re still at the place where they’re saying, ‘We need more research,’ but if we use these criteria that are similar to what we have for (addictions to) tobacco and alcohol, they’re seeing a lot of similar correlations,” Kirkpatrick said.
Because food addiction isn’t in the DSM, health providers can’t diagnose someone with it, Gearhardt said. But as research in this area continues, some medical professionals and nutritionists have come to acknowledge the condition — and the need to address it.
“It’s not a standard part of our diagnostics training that we do,” Gearhardt added, but “people who are reporting this addiction to highly processed foods are suffering.”
Most people seeking treatment for food addiction are probably diagnosed with binge eating disorder “because that’s the closest thing that we have to it, that we can offer a diagnostic code for so that they can receive treatment,” Avena said. But the type of treatment that would be offered for food addiction would be very different, because not everyone who reports having food addiction is binging, and the underlying neurology of food addiction and binge eating disorder aren’t the same.
