The Joyful Misfortune of being a Food Addict

To a food addict, other addictions seem enviable. Not all of them, granted. Shopping addicts are not to be envied, despite their fabulous wardrobes, as it is practically impossible to refrain from purchasing things indefinitely. This means the splurgers are in the same camp as the bingers, so there is really no sense a sugar junkie thinking they would be better off if they could just switch their donut obsession to shoes.

Certain addictions also have a much greater likelihood of killing you each time you indulge, which make them a less than appealing alternative. If you don’t already have an unfortunate addiction to illicit drugs, you would be wise not trialling them as a substitute for the nightly tub of ice cream. Death will come to the long-time food addict, but it takes a considerable amount of soft drink, chocolate cake and fried chicken to get there. For all its downsides, at least food junkies can indulge in their addictive substance knowing the probable short-term outcome will be a lethargic evening in front of the television and not a night spent in the ER.

The reason food (and shopping) addicts might find themselves envying others is that they do not have the luxury of being able to tackle their addictions with complete abstinence. That’s not to say that the path of abstinence is an easy one. Every addict has a hungry goat in their head that desperately wants to keep doing or consuming the thing that gives it the most pleasure. Any attempt to deprive it of its penchant is going to turn that charmingly coercive billy goat into a sharp horned, aggressive and unyielding buck. At best it will cunningly manipulate the abstainer into reneging on their decision to abstain. At worst, the abstainer will feel as though their brain has been taken over by a sadistic torturer who is ready and eager to inflict excruciating suffering until it gets what it wants.

This misery feels endless, but it’s not. Goats actually have quite short memories. Stop feeding it the addictive substance and it will eventually stop demanding it. Some goats may transition to other addictive pleasures, but many will just grow to appreciate the quieter life and start taking longer naps. Once enough time has passed, when the opportunity to indulge in an old addiction crops up, they may give their human some lacklustre nudges in that direction but won’t be too bothered when they are ignored. Goats, if they are being perfectly honest, really prefer the abstinent life.

Of course, this is only helpful if a hungry goat likes something their human can actually live without. Cigarettes or cannabis, for example. As unpleasant as those addictions are, it would be reasonable for a binge eater to wish that their goat preferred smoking to eating, and not just because they’d be thinner. As one doesn’t need to light up, those addicts only need to abstain long enough for their goats to get used to the new smoke-free routine. When goats figure out they are never going to get the thing they’re asking for, they will (eventually) stop suggesting it, and their humans can get on with living a (relatively) goat-free life.*

Unfortunately, food addicts can’t do that if they want to keep on living. Eat they must, and this means they have no choice but to forever endure the pestilent prodding and unhelpful suggestions of their food-crazed goats.

Some people will argue that food-addicted goats are only addicted to ultra-processed food, but that is not quite true. They adore it, naturally, but they also love meal planning, food shopping, food preparation, and—their favourite activity of all—eating. Even if the addict successfully removes all the ultra-processed food products from their diet, their goat will never truly disappear. The act of choosing, buying, cooking, and consuming any type of food keeps the goat at least partially energised, so it will never completely go away. Sure, it would rather dessert was hot apple pie and whipped cream instead of a bowl of diced melon, but it will take what it can get (and usually request seconds).

Certain foods do give goats more energy than others, so eating nothing but garden salads and steamed vegetables for a week may give an addict the impression their goat has disappeared. It has not, but it won’t let them know that. Deprivation just makes a goat more manipulative, so it will happily go along with the illusion that it has vanished. That way, when the thought pops into the addict’s head that it will be perfectly fine to have “just one very small chocolate” as a Sunday treat, they will think they are the ones making that decision. They won’t notice that it’s the goat who’s doing all the talking.

Hungry goats can never truly go away because they are hardwired into the human brain. They appear on the day their human is born and immediately get to work making everyone (baby, mother, and anyone else in the room) suffer tremendously until something tasty is provided. They will continue to offer food recommendations every day for the rest of a person’s life, yet most people never notice them.

If a hungry goat is in tune with their human, they will just pop up around mealtimes and mention how pleasant it would be to stop whatever is being done and eat something. They trust that other meals will follow, so rarely recommend eating too much. Occasionally you will even get an underperforming hungry goat that isn’t fussed about food at all. They tend to nap during mealtimes, which means their human quite often misses lunch. Those types of goats are exceedingly rare, particularly since the advent of junk food. Most goats, even the non-addicted ones, will happily finish a tub of salty, buttered popcorn or a thick slice of chocolate cake even if they are full.

For food addicts, their hungry goat has somehow gotten itself set to starvation mode, which means it is constantly telling its human that they urgently need to eat something. Many, many things, preferably. They really believe it is life or death, which means their goal is to consume as many calories as possible. Thus, the fattier and sweeter a food product is, the more they will want to eat it.

There is no point trying to explain to a goat that they are not living through a famine. Once goats have figured out how relieving it feels to eat enormous quantities of food, it is very difficult to get them to eat any other way. Their human may remember a time when they didn’t eat like this, but goats have no recollection. As mentioned earlier, they have very short memories. They are also generally quite anxious and deeply opposed to change. Any attempts to withhold their favourite foods will only make them panic.

As a hungry goat is hardwired to ensure its human keeps eating, the first mention of food restrictions will send it into a frenzy, and it will commit to working overtime until the diet has been abandoned. As junk food is everywhere, deprived goats have constant opportunities to tempt and coerce their humans into eating the stuff they like the most. This is usually not too hard as everybody has to make daily food choices, and there are only so many goat recommendations that people can ignore. Even the most strong-willed humans will eventually find themselves worn down or manipulated into an ultra-processed feast, which will in turn fuel the goat and strengthen its control. Food addicts end up in a never-ending cycle of binging and dieting, both of which energise their goats.

Any reasonable (and despairing) binge eater will have already come to the conclusion that the only way to detox their goat off ultra-processed food would be to barricade themselves inside a remote cave for several months with nothing but water, kale, and a collection of motivational self-help books. That’s unlikely to work. It would certainly be easier to white knuckle it through a goat’s insatiable drive for food from a snow-covered hole in a Tibetan Mountain, but in the time it took the addict to sort out the trip logistics, their manipulative goat would have talked them into going somewhere with food delivery options.

There is also the problem of coming home. Cutting a hungry goat off from all of its culinary pleasures might be feasible at a raw, SOS-free, wholefood plant-based retreat in the middle of a remote rainforest, but food addicts are going to have to figure out something to feed it when they get home. Alcoholics don’t have an easy time when returning from rehab, but they can also manage pretty well if they keep alcohol out of the house, avoid Friday night work drinks, keep away from bottle shops, and opt out of bartending as a profession. It will still be tough, but it would be a hell of a lot harder if they were forced to drink a light beer several times a day, rum and cokes were provided at every office morning tea, and they had to pass by dozens of brightly-coloured, fabulous-smelling drive-thru bottle-o’s every time they left the house.

Junk food is so ubiquitous and deeply engrained in Western culture that a food addict is likely to feel that their situation is hopeless. They might manage to maintain a home that is free from salt, sugar, and processed food, but stepping outside the front door is a goat’s idea of Disneyland. With all the wonderful choices on offer, there is no way they are going to let their human go out for dinner and just order Brussel sprouts. Unless those sprouts are coated in batter, deep fried, sprinkled with bacon bits, and dunked in cheese sauce, they are never going to compete with a goat’s desire for creamy fettucine carbonara and cheesy garlic bread.

So what is a food addict to do?

The only thing they can do—accept that abstinence is never going to work, and they are going to have to figure out how to live with the goat instead.

This is going to sound terrifying to a long-term food addict as they will have tried thousands of times to eat in moderation and will be quite convinced they’re incapable of doing it. There is another way. It is not fast, and it takes some persistence, but it is a hell of a lot easier than the binging-dieting cycle. It also suits goats. They get what they want, so they never feel deprived, and they also get periods where they can mostly just relax. The more they do it, the more comfortable they get, and the amount of food they demand to eat each day will start to gradually decline.

While other addictions might seem preferable to a binge eater, they really do have the most enviable type. As abstinence is not a viable option, they get to take the path out of addiction that doesn’t involve giving up their source of pleasure. Any long-term binge eater can do it—they just need to figure out how.

Explaining the how will take more words than are left in this blog post, but there will be plenty of other blog posts dedicated to that. This post is really just to point out that food addiction is a special kind of addiction that needs a non-abstinence solution. (Well, food and shopping. The shopaholics are very much in the same untethered boat as the binge eaters.) Freedom from these types of addictions means working out how to negotiate with and retrain a goat, not try to eliminate it completely.

To a binge eater, this will sound like an impossible task. Jacob thought so too. A handful of chips was all it took for his goat to take over his brain. Sometimes it would be weeks before he could wrangle back the reigns, and even then, it was always short term. Once he figured out the solution and allowed enough time for his goat to get on board, everything got better. He stopped feeling like his life was an exhausting power struggle (that he was losing) and the ever-present anxiety he had about food completely disappeared.

Nowadays, if The Goat wants its favourite foods, it has to ask nicely. Jacob never says ‘no,’ but the answer is usually 'not right now’ and The Goat is usually okay with it. It trusts Jacob. It knows it will get what it is craving the next time a special occasion comes around. It knows that they will both enjoy it, and they’ll probably (and happily) eat too much. Then The Goat will agree to several compromise treat foods over the next day or two, after which it will be quite happy to go back to the regular healthy meals.

‘Impossible!’ says every binge eater reading this.

‘Impossible!’ says their goats.

‘I thought so too,’ responds Jacob. ‘But it is possible… and it’s wonderful.’

Food addiction ruined many years of Jacob’s life, but he is glad he went through it. He is glad because only a recovered addict can truly appreciate how good it feels to not want anything; he is glad because he appreciates how good it feels to be free; and he is glad because food tastes better now than it ever has. For Jacob, nothing has brought him more happiness than having had the grateful misfortune of being a food addict.

Published 10th October 2025

* It is really not worth a food addict trying to distract their goat with alternative addictions. It will only make the problem worse. Goats will never replace food with something else, they will just insist on adding the other substances on top as pleasurable bonuses. In fact, the more power the goat has in a food addict’s day-to-day life, the more difficult it will be to resist other addictions. A goat on a ten-thousand calorie daily diet of ultra-processed food is going to have more control over their human than an authoritarian dictator. They will be used to getting what they want, so if they discover some new pleasure, they will happily add it to their list of favourite vices. Wine and television are common favourites, as they go very well with takeout.