How is candy like cocaine?

There’s a steadily growing body of research that says that foods high in sugar and fat—all those forbidden yummies like candy, cookies, cheesecake, and pizza—may lead to food addiction. Food addiction is potentially a painfully real disease akin to drug addiction and alcoholism. Processed foods, according to a recent study from the University of Michigan, have the same effect on the brain’s reward centers as hard drugs. This may be why you ate the entire bowl of Halloween candy this weekend.

The Michigan study is just the tip of the iceberg of food addiction research, a body of knowledge that has been steadily accumulating over the past decade. In a 2010 article in the journal Nature Neuroscience, for