Compulsive Eating Behavior and Food Addiction: Emerging Pathological Constructs

Compulsive Eating Behavior and Food Addiction: Emerging Pathological Constructs is the first book of its kind to emphasize food addiction as an addictive disorder. This book focuses on the preclinical aspects of food addiction research, shifting the focus towards a more complex behavioral expression of pathological feeding and combining it with current research on neurobiological substrates. This book will become an invaluable reference for researchers in food addiction and compulsive eating constructs.

Compulsive eating behavior is a pathological form of feeding that phenotypically and neurobiologically resembles the compulsive-like behaviors associated with both drug abuse and behavioral addictions. Compulsive eating behavior, including Binge Eating Disorder (BED), certain forms of obesity, and ‘food addiction’ affect an estimated 70 million individuals worldwide.

Synthesizes clinical and preclinical perspectives on addictive eating behaviorIdentifies how food addiction is similar and/or different from other addictionsFocuses on the underlying neurobiological mechanismsProvides information on therapeutic interventions for patients with food addiction

1. A history of “food addiction” 2. Food addiction prevalence: development and validation of diagnostic tools 3. Dissecting compulsive eating behavior into three elements 4. Habitual overeating 5. Reward deficits in compulsive eating 6. The dark side of compulsive eating and food addiction: affective dysregulation, negative reinforcement, and negative urgency 7. Food addiction and self-regulation 8. Reward processing in food addiction and overeating 9. Interactions of hedonic and homeostatic systems in compulsive overeating 10. Genetics and epigenetics of food addiction 11. Neuroimaging of compulsive disorders: similarities of food addiction with drug addiction 12. Modeling and testing compulsive eating behaviors in animals 13. Sex and gender differences in compulsive overeating 14. Addressing controversies surrounding food addiction 15. Food addiction and its associations to trauma, severity of illness, and comorbidity