The food cravings are “hard wired” into some obese people in the same way alcoholics crave drinking, a new study finds.

A team of Spanish and Australian researchers devised an experiment in which they served food buffet-style to 39 obese and 42 normal-weight individuals.

Later, they put the subjects into functional MRI brain scanners and showed them photographs of the food they had eaten earlier in an attempt to elicit food craving.

The food pictures triggered activity in the “reward” area of the brain in obese people but not in the brains of subjects of normal weight.

This is the same area of the brain that is stimulated by drugs in drug addicts and by alcohol in alcoholics.

The results show that the concept of food addiction is real and could lead to better weight-loss treatments, the researchers said of their study, which was reported by the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology.