Recent research has showed that junk foods, once thought to be addicting in the same manner as drugs, are not.
Foods with high amounts of sugar, salt and fat were found to activate triggers in the brain similarly to the way drugs do.
However, that doesn't necessarily mean they are addictive like cocaine or nicotine.
"We are biologically wired to respond to certain tastes, textures and colors, but that doesn't mean it's an addiction," Gabriel Harris, assistant professor of food science at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, said.
In a study published in Nature Neuroscience, according to Fox News, three groups of rats were studied over a period of 40 days. One group was fed regular rat food, another group was fed some human foods high in fat content such as bacon and a third group was allowed to eat as much high-fat foods as possible.
When the study concluded, scientists began taking away the high fat human foods the rats were stuffing themselves with. It turns out, the rats enjoy human foods as much as humans do; many rats in the third group became obese and overweight.
When the scientists tried taking away the human food or used electro-shock therapy to induce the rats into eating healthy food, they simply refused. According to the report, the rats starved themselves for two weeks after the study concluded.
"Abusing drugs doesn't affect brain chemistry in the same way," Harris said. "So making a general statement that foods affect the brain in the same way as drugs would be false."
Studies do show though that between 2007-2010, U.S. adults took in 11 percent of their calories from fast food, but Boston University nutritionist Joan Salge Blake still doesn't agree that these foods are addicting.
"Sweets and treats have been around forever," he said. "The problem isn't so much these foods, but the frequency that we allow them to be part of our diet."
She argued that these foods are OK to eat, as long as they are part of a balanced diet.
"There are no bad foods, but there are bad diets," she said. "Consuming certain foods is fine as long as they are consumed in moderation and not all the time. To enjoy these things occasionally is reasonable. That's kind of balance we need to aim for."
