Carolyn Coker Ross writes about the Eight Surprising Parallels Between Food and Drug Addictions in PsychToday. This one resonates for me:
#7 Continuing the Behavior in Spite of Negative Consequences
Drug addicts continue to use even if they’ve lost everything that matters to them. While food addiction may not bankrupt your family or send you to jail in the same way as drug addiction, compulsive eaters may experience serious health consequences such as heart disease and diabetes, relationship problems, and diminished quality of life, yet continue to struggle with poor eating habits.
I realize that many find the concept of food addiction troubling, but I too see parallels, especially with something like alcohol. Some have little trouble with it, others use it to wreck their lives.
As far as actually being addicted to food, there are interesting theories that it’s not just how addictive something is, but how frequently it’s used. So while food may be “weakly” addictive, reinforcing the response multiple times a day may be the reason it can be a problem.
Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our Western diet -- especially sugar, refined grains, and industrial oils. Beth writes about nutrition, ancestral health & food policy. And cats! 
Hi Beth,
Nice post…thank you.
The frequency of exposure to a hyper-rewarding stimulus is (junk food, porn) is most definitely one of the determinants of addictive behaviour.
With respect to eating behaviours, a once-per-week feast on all manner of junk (with relatively bland food in between) is far less problematic than say, a small candy bar with every meal…this has been shown to me many times with myself and with clients.
Unfortunately, the ubiquity of hyper-palatable food in the SAD, coupled with the wide-spread acceptance of the notion that each and every eating occasion must be ‘a joy’, makes it hard to convince people of the wisdom of eschewing hyper-palatable foods for most of the rest of their lives.
Cheers,
Harry