Food Is a Drug

Food is a drug if not properly consumed or used. Throughout America, the number of obese or overweight people is rapidly increasing, due to the lack of excercise, laziness, and mostly the food we ingest everyday. Almost everything we eat has the effect of a drug or narcotic and thus attracts our attention and sooner or later our addiction.

"Food is a drug" seems to be a vast understatement these days. Numerous people are addicted, so to speak, to food, thus the obesity levels in the U.S. There are many definitions of the word drug as there are many definitions of the word narcotic, but both end up meaning the same thing. Drug- A chemical substance, such as a narcotic or hallucinogen, that affects the central nervous system, causing changes in behavior and often addiction; narcotic- An addictive drug, a soothing, numbing agent or thing. Both definitions, of drug and narcotic, use reference to the word addiction, and are both meant in the same manner of a "compulsive physiological and psychological need for a habitforming substance". Just as people are addicted to heroin or marijuana, the statistics of addictive food eaters are much higher.

People may arge that food is only unhealthy if an excessive amount of it is eaten. Almost all drugs react in the same way, yet doctors and specialists allow cancer patients to use marijuana as a "painkiller". But isn't marijuana still considered a drug? Drugs are given to people to cure disease or illnesses or even to help the patient cope with the pain. In instances of depression, doesn't food stand in place of that pill or shot? To people with depression, food is a comfort, it helps them as much as a pill would. In the movie "Super Size Me", Morgan Spurlock ate nothing but McDonalds for one month and became addicted to the food. He ate McDonalds for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and began using it as a "comfort food". Before his experiment, Morgan was perfectly healthy and average for his weight and height group, afterwards he began feelings sick and depressed, and his health went downhill. Such as Morgan used food to feel better, his "cure" or drug was the food he consumed.

Looking around the world today, someone may wonder how people got to be so "heavyset" or overweight, not that everyone is, but numbers are rising. The food we eat is beginning to have so many unknown chemicals in it that it is a wonder we can still digest it. As stated in the movie, "Toxic Sludge is good for you", "markets cannot think long term and the present nature of advertising will increase". The use of propaganda is essential to the selling of food and other products throughtout America and the world. Companiies and food manufacturers do not