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By Matthew Rees

Food and Health Fact #136: Addiction risks and gastric bypass surgery

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This week's "food for thought" excerpt is from Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence (2021), by Anna Lembke.

"Most people who are obese have an underlying food addiction, which is not adequately addressed with surgery alone. Few people who undergo [gastric bypass surgery] get the behavioral and psychological interventions they need to help them change their eating habits. Hence many of them resume eating in unhealthy ways, expand their now smaller stomachs, and end up with medical complications and the need for repeat surgeries. When food is no longer an option, many switch from food to another drug, like alcohol. . . . We can and should celebrate a medical intervention that can improve the health of so many people. But the fact that we must resort to removing and reshaping internal organs to accommodate our food supply marks a turning point in the history of human consumption."