Can You Guess Which Food Is Most Addictive?

Go on, give it a guess.
Can You Guess Which Food Is Most Addictive?

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Science has pinpointed the most-addictive food. Care to hazard a guess as to what it is?

Go on, give it a try.

OK, here’s a hint: It also happens to be the food we Instagram the most. (Perhaps that’s not coincidence.)

Anyway, it’s pizza, the frequent meal of choice for everyone from time-pressed parents to college students to birthday-celebrating preschoolers — which is to say, basically, everyone.

And if you thought the answer was chocolate, you weren’t far off. That’s the second-most-addictive food, according to a study recently conducted at the University of Michigan.

The study’s researchers had 120 undergraduates complete the Yale Food Addiction Scale and then indicate which of 35 foods they “most associated with addictive-like eating behaviors.” Then they enlisted 384 community participants to further investigate how the attributes of those 35 foods correlated to “addictive-like eating behavior.”

And? Processed foods, higher in fat and/or refined carbohydrates, with a high glycemic load, were found to be most addictive.

The study “provides preliminary evidence that not all foods are equally implicated in addictive-like eating behavior,” the authors concluded, “and highly processed foods, which may share characteristics with drugs of abuse (e.g. high dose, rapid rate of absorption) appear to be particularly associated with ‘food addiction.’"

Whoa. And you thought you were just joking when you talked about getting your “chocolate fix.”

Anyhow, here are the top 10 most-addictive foods, among those assessed in the study:

1. Pizza
2. Chocolate
3. Chips
4. Cookie
5. Ice cream
6. French fries
7. Cheeseburger
8. Soda (not diet)
9. Cake
10. Cheese

As if they had to tell us.

Photo courtesy of iStock

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