Next International Food Addiction Conference:
When: 4&5 September 2025
Where: Mexico City, Mexico.
This is the international stage where clinicians, researchers, academics and public health professionals will again share their latest experience, knowledge, research findings and hypotheses, focused on how to combat the world’s growing health problems caused by challenging food environments.
Building on this year’s IFACC 2024; the conference in London, England, that celebrated the first ever International Consensus on the subject of addiction-like symptoms related to foods, next year’s International Food Addiction and Comorbidities Conference, IFACC 2025, will take place at Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM), Santa Fe campus in Mexico City. In addition to its university, the institute also manages a medical school, 8 international sites in other South American countries and the US and 15 liaison offices in Belgium, N. America, China, France, Italy, Switzerland and Spain. According to Times Higher Education’s latest rankings, “Tec de Monterrey” is the best-ranked University in Mexico and a Top-5 University in the region.
By hosting the conference at this prestigious and very internationally focused university in Mexico, we are pleased to recognise the important role that the Americas play in identifying, understanding and finding workable solutions for the addictive effects of ultra processed foods, their connection to the obesity epidemic, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and other comorbidities in increasingly younger populations.
We need to halt and reverse these trends.
IFACC 2025 looks at how we can collaborate more effectively across borders to achieve this.
We thank professor Adrian Soto-Mota and his colleagues for offering to be our hosts for IFACC 2025.
A draft speaker programme, further information about the location, virtual attendance options and early bird ticket sales will be available from October.
To register for updates please email conferences@the-chc.org
We look forward to seeing you there.
The IFACC Team
Our speakers and talks
Dr. Chris van Tulleken
Dr. Chris van Tulleken is an infectious diseases doctor at University College London Hospitals, and one of the BBC’s leading science presenters, having worked on many flagship Health & Science programmes. Chris and his twin brother Xand’s double BAFTA & Broadcast award winning series for CBBC, ‘Operation Ouch’, continues to be a global success.
During 2020, Chris shared his own personal experience of COVID19 in the BBC One documentary ‘Surviving the Virus: My Brother & Me’. Chris and Xand also devised and host the award nominated BBC Sounds /R4 podcast, ‘A Thorough Examination’.
Chris’s book, Ultra-Processed People, has become a global bestseller and book of the year on many of the most respected lists in 2023.
09.05 Ultra - Processed Food: Addiction, Policy and the Need for this Conference
Dr. Robert Lustig
Dr. Robert H. Lustig, is Emeritus Professor of Paediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, and Member of the Institute for Health Policy Studies at UCSF. Dr. Lustig is a neuroendocrinologist, with expertise in obesity, diabetes, metabolism, and nutrition.
He is one of the leaders of the current “anti-sugar” movement that is changing the food industry and is dedicating his retirement from clinical medicine to help fix the food supply by interacting with all stakeholders to bring them together around a common vision of metabolic health: protect the liver, feed the gut, support the brain.
Dr. Lustig graduated from MIT in 1976, and received his M.D. from Cornell University Medical College in 1980. He also received his Masters of Studies in Law (MSL) degree at University of California, Hastings College of the Law in 2013.
He is the author of the popular books Fat Chance (2012), The Hacking of the American Mind (2017), and Metabolical (2021).
09.30 The Battle Over Food Addiction
Michael Moss
Michael Moss is a journalist and the author of two New York Times bestselling books on the processed food industry, Salt Sugar Fat and Hooked, published in 22 languages. He is a frequent guest on newscasts globally, from CBS This Morning to the BBC.
His keynote speeches to corporations and organizations feature his work as an investigative reporter with The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting in 2010 for his investigation of the dangers of contaminated meat, and he was a finalist in 2006 for his reporting on the lack of protective armour for soldiers in Iraq, and in 1999 for a team effort on Wall Street’s emerging influence in the nursing home industry.
He was an adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and in 1983 he covered an expedition up the West Ridge of Mount Everest in Nepal.
10.15 The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food
Dr. Vera Tarman
Dr. Vera Tarman, is an addiction physician and Medical Director of Renascent, one of Canada’s largest treatment centres for drugs and alcohol abuse. She has been speaking, teaching and writing about the clinical aspects of food addiction for the last 15 years.
She is author of Food Junkies: Recovery from Food Addiction, co-host to ‘Food Junkies Podcast’, and moderator of a free vibrant Facebook group ’I’m Sweet Enough: Sugar Free for Life’. You can check out her videos on YouTube: veratarman md.
She is also a food addict in recovery for over 15 years.
11.30 Beyond Moderation Into Abstinence: Why Food Addicts Need Zero Tolerance
Prof. Adrian Soto-Mota
Prof. Adrian Soto-Mota is a medical doctor specialising in Internal Medicine. After his residency, he obtained his doctoral degree researching human ketone physiology at the University of Oxford and trained as a Data Scientist at Harvard.
He is a researcher and a Professor in the Internal Medicine Program at Mexico’s National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition. His research focuses on the clinical applications of different dietary interventions and the use and abuse of statistical methods in Biomedical Sciences.
He was accepted this year as a Fellow of the American College of Physicians.
12.15 Lessons Learnt from patients about Food Addiction
Dr. Erica LaFata
Dr. Erica LaFata is an Assistant Research Professor at the Drexel University Center for Weight, Eating, and Lifestyle Science. She earned her doctoral degree in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan and completed her postdoctoral research fellowship with the Center for Weight and Eating Disorders at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. LaFata’s program of research examines whether ultra-processed foods may be reinforcing in a manner that directly drives overeating and explores how core mechanisms of addictive disorders, like withdrawal, may contribute to eating-related problems for vulnerable individuals.
She has published over 40 academic papers on this topic, and her work is presently funded by NIDDK and the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Dr. LaFata’s research findings have also been covered in popular media outlets, such as the Huffington Post, ABC News, and Forbes.
13.45 The Research on Why UPF Food Addiction is Best Conceptualized as a Substance-Use Disorder
Dr. David Wiss
Dr. David Wiss became a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN) in 2013 and founded Nutrition in Recovery, a group practice of RDNs specializing in treating eating and substance use disorders.
He earned his Ph.D. in Public Health with a minor in Health Psychology from UCLA.
Dr. Wiss is a scientific author with over 20 peer-reviewed publications, a nutrition and health consultant, functional medicine practitioner, recovery coach, and passionate educator.
Learn more about the intersection of nutrition and mental health at Wise Mind Nutrition, where you can learn about his revolutionary mobile app, available for download today.
14.30 Ultra-Processed Foods and Mental Health: Where do Eating Disorders Fit into the Puzzle?
Dr. Timothy Brewerton
Dr. Timothy Brewerton is Affiliate Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston. He is currently Senior Clinical Research Consultant for SunCloud Health, Senior Clinical Advisor for Eating Recovery Center Pathlight Behavioral Health Centers, and Senior Research Consultant for Monte Nido & Affiliates.
He is board certified in general, child/adolescent and forensic psychiatry, and addiction medicine.
He is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association; Distinguished Fellow of the American Academy of Child-Adolescent Psychiatry; Founding Fellow of Academy of Eating Disorders; Founding member of the Eating Disorder Research Society.
He has authored over 185 articles/chapters and edited two books, including a text on eating disorders and addictive disorders.
15.15 A Psychiatric Perspective: Significance of Food Addiction in Evaluation & Treatment of Eating Disorders and Related Comorbidity
Dr. Anna Lembke, MD
Anna Lembke, MD, is professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic.
A clinician scholar, she is the author of more than a hundred peer-reviewed publications, including Drug Dealer, MD – How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It’s So Hard to Stop.
She has testified before the United States House of Representatives and Senate, served as an expert witness in federal and state opioid litigation, and is an internationally recognized leader in addiction medicine treatment and education.
Her latest book, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence combines the neuroscience of addiction with the wisdom of recovery to explore the problem of compulsive overconsumption in a dopamine-overloaded world.
16.05 From Dopamine Nation to Dopamine Planet
Dr. Nicole Avena
Dr. Nicole Avena is an Associate Professor of Neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, and a Visiting Professor of Health Psychology at Princeton University.
She is a research neuroscientist and expert in the fields of nutrition, diet and addiction, with a special focus on nutrition during early life and pregnancy, and women’s health. She has done ground breaking work developing models to characterize food addition and the dangers of excess sugar intake.
In addition to over 100 peer-reviewed scholarly publications, Dr. Avena has written several popular books, and her latest, Sugarless, covers the latest science on sugar addiction and how to overcome it.
She frequently appears as a science expert in the media, including regular appearances on Good Day NY, The Doctors, and the former Dr. Oz Show as well as many news programs. She has the #2 most watched TED-ED Health talk, How Sugar Affects Your Brain, with over 17 million views and counting.
16.40 Your Brain on Food: Neuroscience Perspectives of Food Addiction
Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson
Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson went from a drug-addicted teenager to a food-addicted young woman. In a quest to reclaim her life, she got clean, stopped eating sugar and flour, and went from obese to slender decades ago.
Now she is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester, a multiple New York Times bestselling author, and the founder and CEO of Bright Line Eating Solutions, a worldwide movement dedicated to helping people have their Bright Transformations—the full physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual change that accompanies healthy, permanent weight loss and true freedom from food addiction.
17.25 Ultra-Processed Food Addiction Solutions: What Next?
Dr. Robert Lustig
Dr. Robert H. Lustig, is Emeritus Professor of Paediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, and Member of the Institute for Health Policy Studies at UCSF. Dr. Lustig is a neuroendocrinologist, with expertise in obesity, diabetes, metabolism, and nutrition.
He is one of the leaders of the current “anti-sugar” movement that is changing the food industry and is dedicating his retirement from clinical medicine to help fix the food supply by interacting with all stakeholders to bring them together around a common vision of metabolic health: protect the liver, feed the gut, support the brain.
Dr. Lustig graduated from MIT in 1976, and received his M.D. from Cornell University Medical College in 1980. He also received his Masters of Studies in Law (MSL) degree at University of California, Hastings College of the Law in 2013. He is the author of the popular books Fat Chance (2012), The Hacking of the American Mind (2017), and Metabolical (2021).
17.55 Rallying Call - Where from here?