They Said This 30 Years Ago

Boozers' kin more likely to be obese and lap up food instead of alcohol: study

Reuters

Sunday, January 2nd 2011, 4:00 AM

CHICAGO - People with a family history of alcoholism are much more likely to be obese - and researchers think it's because their brains make them binge on junk food instead of booze.

"Much of what we eat nowadays contains more calories than the food we ate in the 1970s and 1980s, but it also contains the sorts of calories - particularly a combination of sugar, salt and fat - that appeal to what are commonly called the reward centers in the brain," said Richard Grucza of Washington University in St. Louis.

"Alcohol and drugs affect those same parts of the brain and our thinking was that because the same brain structures are being stimulated, overconsumption of those foods might be greater in people with a predisposition to addiction."

His team found that people with a family history of alcoholism - who may be predisposed to addiction - were almost 50% more likely to be obese.

The alcoholism-overeating link might help explain rising obesity in the United States, which has doubled from 15% of the population in the late 1970s to 33% in 2004.

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ACOA - Adult Children of Alcoholics - and Overeaters Anonymous have been saying this for decades now. In its heyday back in the 1980's you could find as many ACOA 12-step meetings as AA or OA ones. Many people in OA arrived there via AA or NA or other 12-step groups. In my own family, most of my parent's generation and before were alcoholics and over-eaters. In my generation you also have alcoholics and over-eaters but also gambling addicts, shoppping addicts, hoarders, drug addicts, and sex addicts.