What is the world’s most addictive food?
It’s a question we often think about here at JOE when we’re eating through our eighth bag of crisps or waking up at 3am to secretly eat ice cream from the freezer.
But now it seems like science has a definitive answer to what actually is the crack cocaine of the food world, according to IFLS.
Researchers at the University of Michigan created a scale of addictiveness in order to rank things like chocolate, cola and chips to find the one thing we crave most.
The researchers described addictiveness as “loss of control over consumption, continued use despite negative consequences, and an inability to cut down despite the desire to do so” – we can relate to that.
They studied more than 500 people to see which were the top foods they just couldn’t resist.
They found that foods with a high fat and carb content shared the similar properties of illegal drugs which can trigger addiction-like responses.
First of all they got 120 students to complete the Yale Food Addiction Scale to see how ‘susbtance dependent they were. Then they were shown photos of a host of common foods in pairs and then asked which were most likely to spark an addiction-like response.
Chocolate came out top, followed by ice cream and then fries.
But unsatisfied by this answer, the researchers then delved deeper. They asked a further 384 people to rank the addictiveness of each food using a scale of one to seven.
It turns out the world’s most addictive food, according to this research, is pizza.
This was followed by chocolate and then crisps – all with high fat and sugar content.
You won’t be surprised to learn that the least addictive foods in the world were cucumber, carrots and beans.
