Pam Peeke
A conference in southeast Iowa on Saturday promises to address recent discoveries and solutions “to help enhance individual life and change the world.
Physician, scientist and best-selling author, Dr. Pamela Peeke will address America’s addiction to food, which she says is a rampant national epidemic.
Dr. Peeke, the chief medical correspondent for nutrition and fitness for Discovery Health TV, says a new study from the National Institutes of Health proclaims food addiction a reality.
“This is groundbreaking,” Peeke says. “This is a milestone. This affects everything from public health to what goes on in your pantry. This changes up the whole discussion about what we eat and what it does to us. It even changes our genes. It causes organic changes in our brain.”
In some ways, food addiction may be harder to beat than drugs, she says, since drug addicts don’t emerge from rehab to see billboards urging them to take more drugs. We’re surrounded by temptations to eat in all forms of media, she says, which makes it difficult to kick a food addiction.
“The mass majority of people who are overweight or obese are food addicted to one degree or the other,” Peeke says. “The people who are in the worst shape are the ones who have cross-addictions, more than one addiction. They’re a smoker, they may have some alcohol issues, drugs, whatever else. It’s almost un-American not to be food addicted.”
Dr. Peeke says being food-addicted is as severe as any other addiction. “Once you find out you’re either teetering on the brink of or you really have an all-out situation with a food addiction, then you need to do what you do for any addiction, detox and recovery.”
Her talk is called, “Your Brain’s Reward Center: Hacked by a Cupcake,” and she’ll talk about the neurological basis of food addictions. Peeke is among eight speakers headlining the day-long conference called “Our Conscious Future” at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield.
Audio: Matt Kelley’s interview with Pamela Peeke 4:55.