"Just Say No" to Drugs. But to Pizza...?

Picture yourself standing outside, happy to be enjoying the vice you’ve been itching for all afternoon. A colleague next to you is smoking a cigarette, but you’re savoring a slice of leftover pizza.  

Pizza, like nicotine, can have addictive qualities, according to information provided by Erica Schulte, a researcher pursuing a doctoral degree in clinical psychology at the University of Michigan, via email.  

Highly-processed foods have high quantities of ingredients like fats and sugars that hit your system rapidly and produce a rewarding feeling similar to that which comes from drugs, wrote Schulte. This can cause addictive behaviors, such as cravings.

That’s good for Taso Alimonos, owner of both Georgio’s Pizzeria locations in East Lansing, who gets most of his business from the after-bar crowd, he said.


 Customers can choose a slice from between 20 and 40 types of pizza, he said, so there are plenty of options when picking your poison.

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