Food Addiction And Obesity

The levels of obesity in this country are skyrocketing especially in children and young adults. It appears as though part of this increase is related to instances of food addiction. In an addiction, the sufferer is replacing good emotional health with a substance that they perceive can give them a better feeling than they are able to produce themselves. In food addiction, this is usually manifested at using food to change our emotional state instead of dealing with the external causes of the state or learning how to deal with causes in a healthy way.
Thus, if we are sad we eat to feel happy. If we are bored we eat for something to do. If we are happy we eat to celebrate. All of these are examples of using food as an emotion changer instead of dealing with the emotions themselves. This may be effecting children and young adults more than older people because of how they view the world. Most children and young adults have spent the majority of time in a fantasy world. Whether it was TV, video games, or music videos, the last few generations have spent a majority of their time watching other people live their lives instead of the children and young adults living their's.
What this means is people never get to experience emotions of their own and learn how to deal with them. All through history there have been good times and bad, wonderful lives and tragedy, but if a person views these fantasy lives in movies, TV, and video games this realization can be lost on them. It appears that life should always been fun and exciting. The characters almost always have their problems solved within the one hour or two hours alotted. This makes us want to search for the quick answer in our lives instead of understanding that we have to work through problems and learn to deal with them.
There are a lot of causes of our current epidemic. With childhood obesity there are other factors such as the types of foods eaten and how much exercise a child is getting each day. But from what I have seen, food addiction and treatment could be a major cause.