Fast Food Restaurant Want You Additcted

When you need a snack, you aren't too far apart from drug addicts.

From New Scientist:

When volunteers received a dose of a natural hunger-inducing hormone called ghrelin, their brains responded to pictures of food in the same way that addicted people's brains do to cigarettes or drugs, says Alain Dagher, a neurologist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who led the study.

This mechanism probably helped humans to load up on life-saving calories when food was scarce – a likely scenario during much of evolutionary history. But with well-stocked supermarkets and a fast-food outlet on every corner, such brain signals can make food addicts of us all.