This is your "food addiction".  Take a good look.  (wall of text) Wall of text incoming.  Brace yourself. Some of you already know about this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-83nEuXTjBE TL;DW - Morbidly obese guy uploads a video mocking taxpayers for buying his food, laptop, and medical care. Some people may be unaware of this, but the validity of the concept of food addiction is not a settled issue.  Whether you think food addiction is real (I don't), I'm going to make an appeal to you based on the consequences of the concept of food addiction being treated as valid.  Now I can already hear some people wanting to protest: "That's a fallacy!".  No.  No it's not.  An appeal to consequences fallacy argues that something is true or false because of the consequences of accepting it as such.  I won't be doing that.  I'm just opening the door for you so you can see where accepting this concept can lead, and hopefully this will make you consider it more carefully.  The final decision on what to believe is something I will leave up to you. So what happens if the concept of food addiction isn't treated as valid?  The guy above gets no sympathy, no attention, and is treated by society as the asshole and the burden he is rather than as someone who is blameless for something he can't control and who requires constant coddling.   The thing about addiction these days is that it no longer means what it used to.  It used to be that addiction came with some kind of physically manifested dependency, meaning you would likely suffer physical withdrawal symptoms if you didn't do it.  Now, addiction is defined by many as basically something that 1) you enjoy doing, 2) that you have no control over, and 3) that negatively impacts your life in some way.  Dependency doesn't need to enter into the picture. It's 2) that I really take issue with.  Treating people as though they have no control over what they do is not only asinine, but it's harmful.  It's harmful to them because it's telling them that they can't possibly hope to change themselves, and it takes away any potential motivation they would have for trying.  It renders them powerless, just like they do to people in AA, and creates a perpetual dependency on others for their well being rather than empowering them to take charge of themselves.  Google the words Alcoholics Anonymous cult if you want your eyes opened about that.  And it's also harmful to society because it creates further drain on time, manpower, and resources that go towards treating them as this kind of addict rather than giving them the tools they need to fix their selves.  And for those people who know they can change but don't want to, the concept of food addiction gives them something to hide behind.  It becomes a tool of enablement. This is boogie2988: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHa9rjQUDq4 Boogie is a manipulator.  He is a fat disgusting piece of shit with a whole novel's worth of excuses.  Food addiction is one of them.  Boogie also happens to be a good speaker and is able to be very charming when he wants to be, which is how he is able to continue milking kids on youtube by posting about toys, video games, movies, and crying about his weight while continuing to overeat so much that he never actually loses it.  He has kept this up for years.  He will never change because he has no reason to.  He has a whole army of people who will keep feeling sorry for him and keep providing him all the attention and ad revenue he needs.  He is his own kind of professional victim.  Without the perceived validity of the concept of food addiction and the other sob story excuses he uses, he would only be seen as a fat piece of shit who only has himself to blame, his ability to get positive attention and support would be limited, and he might actually have a reason to change, or at least show us something closer to his true self. TL;DR - To hell with food addiction.  I personally don't think it's real.  Whether or not you agree with me, just look at where the concept gets us.  It turns our whole society into potential fat enablers.  Fuck that.  Obesity is a cancerous tumor that needs to be cut out, not fed.  Hold people accountable for their own damn actions and let them face the societal consequences of their shitty choices for once. Some further reading: http://www.providencejournal.com/article/20130920/OPINION/309209894 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3561707/ https://www.nutracheck.co.uk/Library/Calories/addictions.html Do your own research if you like.  You will probably find a lot of noise about the triggering of pleasure responses in the brain.  This to me has never been compelling, since anything you enjoy will cause these same responses and will make you more likely to seek to repeat the experience.  Just because some areas of the brain and some kinds of activities are associated with 2 different things, it does not mean both things are actually the same.  Keep that in mind.