This sequence repeats over months and years. We recognize similar recursive loops with foods, alcoholic beverages and addictive drugs. We first encounter withdrawal symptoms, which are similar to drug and alcohol withdrawal symptoms. Finally, we observe that specific foods trigger cravings and compulsive or binge-eating. The basic pattern of using and abusing addictive substances is a recursive loop .
Normal eating is controlled by recursive loops with cycles of hunger and satiety.
Normal hunger builds slowly and rhythmically, but can be over-ridden by normal activities. If food is not eaten, normal hunger builds in pulses of increasing intensity, but the normal person can carry on with activities and does not develop distressing symptoms. An abnormal, addictive loop is more intense, exclusive and leads to the wrong results. Cravings are intense feelings of hunger, associated with strong and distracting drives to ingest food or drink. Cravings may be interpreted as urges to find missing nutrients, but the foods found in compulsive searches are not biologically correct.