There's a perfect reason why you're having those late-night pizza cravings. A new study published in the journal Plos One revealed that pizza, along with 34 other types of food, were created and designed to appeal to certain centers in the brain that makes food addictive.
The study experimented with 120 undergraduate college students and surveyed 400 participants, according to Yahoo. The students were shown the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) in the first part of the study to identify which foods they can and cannot resist.
The study discovered that the students were either unable to quit a food, developed a strong tolerance for a food, or ate more food than they wanted to. Among the foods listed in the YFAS, the students associated processed, high glycemic and fatty food to "addictive-like eating behaviors," according to Mental Floss.
The 400 respondents in the survey were then asked to rate the food based on the same scale, which helped researchers determine the ranking.
The top 35 most addictive foods ranked accordingly:
1. Pizza
2. Chocolate
3. Chips
4. Cookies
5. Ice Cream
6. French Fries
7. Cheeseburgers
8. Non-diet soda
9. Cake
10. Cheese
11. Bacon
12. Fried chicken
13. Rolls
14. Buttered popcorn
15. Cereal
16. Gummies
17. Steak
18. Muffins
19. Nuts
20. Eggs
21. Chicken Breast
22. Pretzels
23. Plain crackers
24. Water
25. Granola Bars
26. Strawberries
27. Corn (without butter or salt)
28. Salmon
29. Bananas
30. Broccoli
31. Plain brown rice
32. Apples
33. Beans
34. Carrots
35. Cucumbers
"In a similar manner that drugs are processed to increase their addictive potential, this study provides insight that highly processed foods may be intentionally manufactured to be particularly rewarding through the addition of fat and refined carbohydrates, like white flour and sugar," said lead study author Erica Shulte via CNN.
"I think in the majority of cases when we have a problem with a substance, whether it's a food or drug...we will ignore it," said Wesleyan University psychology assistant professor Mike Robinson. While not part of the study, Robinson also suggested avoiding foods that a person can't control eating. "We are not in a situation where we will have dietary deficiencies (and) whenever possible we should be aiming to cook foods for ourselves."
