After thinking about the world's biggest addiction, I have found this paper with a similar viewpoint. The authors propose that refined food consumption is a type of substance abuse problem. In the paper, their survey results show that many people who are overweight exhibit the same type of behavior as those addicted to other substances like alcohol or tobacco.
The paper is chocked full of good information, such as this graph below(click to enlarge):
It shows that since 1970 consumption of potentially addictive foods has skyrocketed, while consumption of an unrefined food like animal protein has remained relatively constant.
The authors of this paper are from the Refined Food Addiction Research Foundation, whose website is here.
