The 9 most addictive carbs -- and how to kick your habit
Manhattan family doctor Bruce Roseman used to be addicted to foods like bread and pasta. He can attest to the fact that once you put back a highly addictive carb, you only want more and more—just like heroin. And to kick the carbs, he says, you have to follow an addiction treatment model.
In fact, Roseman says that new brain imaging techniques from the emerging field of addiction neuroscience show that a certain carbs—which he calls “addictocarbs”—stimulate the addiction and pleasure centres of the brain, causing irresistible cravings just like opioids.
“I didn’t even realize I was as addicted,” Roseman tells Yahoo Canada. “I was a 52-year-old guy with a thriving medical practice. My life revolved around food. I loved cooking….But the reality was I knew I couldn’t eat one piece of bread at dinner. I knew I couldn’t eat one Oreo. I knew I would have to keep eating.
“In my office I have a big picture of two brains: one on heroin one on addictocarbs,” he says, “and you can’t tell the difference.”
Roseman, who also holds joint appointments at Mount Sinai Hospital in the departments of family medicine and OB/GYN, says he was overweight for most of his life until he gave up carbs, having twice lost 70 pounds only to gain it all back. Once he realized he had to turn his life around, he began looking at the way addictive substances affect the brain.
He then narrowed his list of the most addictive carbs out there to nine:
Bread
Potatoes
Pasta
Flour
Rice
Sugar
High-fructose corn syrup
Fruit juice
Soda
“I came up with those nine because I saw it in myself and in treating my patients over the years that these foods presented with the greatest addiction challenges,” says Roseman, author of The Addictocarb Diet: Avoid the 9 Highly Addictive Carbs While Eating Anything Else You Want.
Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show that consumption of these particular foods and ingredients have increased as the obesity epidemic has grown, he adds.
Whether it’s potato chips or heroin, Roseman says overcoming an addiction is a multistep process. Cutting out the addictive substance is just the start, a move that will result in withdrawal. His advice is to start out by drinking nothing but a banana-berry shake with pitted prunes and skim, almond, or soy milk for three days. After that, he says, the cravings will start to go away.
“The second phase is rehab,” he says. “Just like in a heroin rehab program, you have to avoid substances and learn what you can and cannot do. I learned I could have sweet potatoes instead of regular potatoes. There are certain types of pasta I can eat and certain types I can’t. I can eat certain types of crackers but not bread.”
From there it’s maintenance.
When you’re cutting out carbs, Roseman suggests starting slowly, by eliminating one at a time from your diet so it’s manageable. (He provides recipes for alternatives to addictive carbs in his book.)
He also has two firm rules when it comes to losing weight and keeping it off. The first is no bread, no potatoes, no exceptions; the second is to eat when you’re hungry, not just because it’s meal time.
