Time to Face up to Food Addiction

Today, when it comes to what is the most influential addiction, Internet addiction
would be the first thing popping up in peoples minds. Thus, the long term existence
addiction, food addiction which outlives addictions resulted from the Internet, gets
ignorant. Unlike the Internet addiction, food addiction has no age limit and can
happen in everywhere. Besides, as water and air, the two important elements for
peoples survival, food is one of the elements we need to be alive. However, there is
no water addiction, air addiction, but food addiction. Ironically, for many people, they
take food addiction only as something individual and harmful to ones health. To
unveil its ignored part, it is time to get deep insight into food addiction.
Among food addiction, gluttony is the most obvious and long-existed one. It can
be found in many classic literary works, and even widely known as one of the Seven
Sins. Gluttony means that people eat while they do not need. Therefore, the Eskimos,
although they eat all day long, they cannot be classified as gluttony because they eat
to resist the extremely chilly weather in Arctic. Gluttony makes people out of shapes
and results in many other obesity diseases. Most importantly, it can deter ones
intellectual development. In human body, blood always stays in digest system after
one has a meal. Immoderate eating causes the blood to stay in our stomachs and
bowels for long so that, with little blood flowing back, our brain cells cannot get
sufficient nutrients. In the long run, ones intelligence is likely to drop.
Picky eating is also common in our lives, but issues it brings are different from
those of glutton. It refers to the behavior that people refuse to have balanced diets;
instead, they only eat the food they prefer. Thus, for individuals, it tends to cause
malnutrition. Usually, malnutrition only happens in poor country; however, it
becomes a shared phenomenon in many rich countries. Thus, a moral problem it
brings out is the attitude of rich people to take food for granted. People in need have
meager food to eat while those who have additional food waste it at random. Finally, a
sense of relative deprivation stemming from the inefficiency food consumption will
take our society apart.
Bulimia Nervosa, unlike gluttony and picky eating, results in not only physical
problems but also mental ones. It is a disease that patients fear to gain weight so they

usually feel the unspeakable guilt whenever they eat. To lessen their guilt, they throw
out what they have just eaten all the way out. As the kind of pathological behavior
recurred for times, from throats to stomachs, these patients might suffer from chronic
stomachache and even throat cancer. However, before their life ended by physical
diseases, they are usually tortured by melancholia, which comes from the guilt and
fears of putting on weights. Eventually, mental problems might lead them to lose their
emotion control and become untimed bombs in our society.
Anorexia, also a common disease from food addiction, can easily claim ones life.
It mostly comes from the social aesthetics that getting thinner equals to beauty.
When patients value critiques about their body shapes, they tend to deprive
themselves of food as an ultimate and one best way to keep themselves in good
shapes. At first they do reach their purpose, but later when things go extreme, they
become the so-called zero-size people. Once they are zero-size, death is
considered the only way to help them recover from the disease because most
patients refuse to restart a normal diet.
Deeply rooting in our society, food addiction influences humans from ancient days
to now. Generally, the majority still consider that Internet addiction have a more
profound impact on humans. In my opinion, those addictions derive from the
dependence on Internet can be solved; for example, a new technology substitute the
Internet can instantly decrease the influence from Internet addiction. However, no
matter how the world changes, food addiction will exist as long as human exist in the
world. Thus, the influences food addiction imposed on human should never be
overlooked.