[link to www.science20.com]

A paper presented at the 2013 Canadian Neuroscience Meeting, the annual meeting of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience - Association Canadienne des Neurosciences (CAN-ACN), says the problem is addiction rather than food wealth - the authors claim that high-fructose corn syrup can cause behavioral reactions in rats similar to those produced by drugs of abuse such as cocaine. It's the "Food Addiction" hypothesis that has recently become popular, which posits that we could be addicted to food just like drugs.

Addiction happens when drug use shifts from positive reinforcement to the negative kind; drugs are relied on to prevent or relieve negative states that otherwise result from abstinence (e.g., withdrawal) or from adverse environmental circumstances (e.g. stress).