Food Addiction For The Non-Addictive?
Although Overeaters Anonymous was started many moons ago, with the founding principle of no white flour and sugar, lots of important people are now acknowledging and writing about the potential addictiveness of certain foods. Real addictiveness. Not just you-like-it-so-much-you-can’t-stop, but real possible organic brain changes. Sort of makes me feel vindicated.
When I first read Kelly Brownell’s (of Yale) recent interview in Nutrition Action, my first response was disappointment about his opinion that it isn’t really American’s faults that they are overweight, that the environment is to blame. It seemed to fit with the whole new American culture of blame, and lack of self-responsibility. Perhaps valid, but such a dis-empowering cultural mindset.
But it got me to thinking. You really do have to wonder why so many Americans, and any westernized nation really at this point, could have two thirds of the population being willing to be fat. And not just overweight, but obese. Probably most of these people are not food addicts. If they lived somewhere non-westernized, they surely wouldn’t have this level of a weight problem.
So why then don’t we just stop eating so much? Seems simple enough, right? Really, makes you wonder if something else is going on with people’s physiology. How could this many otherwise competent, intelligent, diligent, and reasonably self-caring individuals let themselves get this out of hand? What…did the entire nation just stop caring about how they look, about dying young, about the health of their kids? Even many formerly buff, heart throb movie stars are now fat. What happened to their vanity? You’ve got to figure that something bigger than simply enjoying eating must be at work here.
And, if it’s true that certain foods (sugar, fat, salt and additives possibly) actually affect the reward pathways in our brains and for all intents and purposes “break” our appetite mechanisms, doesn’t it just make that much more of a case for really hunkering down and learning to take more responsibility for the behavior patterns we create right from the get go for ourselves and our families and for just how much stimulus we allow ourselves to be exposed to? What better solution is there at the moment?
Brownell, Kessler (former Surgeon General) and others area suggesting that the government take some financial/tax action to change things to incentivize people and make it financially more cost effective to eat fruits and vegetables and not junk food. And you can certainly see how that would help, in fact probably has to happen. But let’s face it, that is not likely to happen immediately. Not with the power of the food company lobbies. There is some amazing statistic like (and I’m probably going to get this wrong, but you’ll get the drift), more money is spent on food advertising every year than all other advertising combined. Something like that. That’s some leverage.
Time to take charge of taking charge. After all, we are the heirs of a great tradition set forth by our forefathers of doing just this. Did you ever see the movie The Patriot? America was created by a whole nation of people who took responsibility, who did whatever it took to create the life they wanted. We specifically stood, a nation eventually united, in fighting for the right to make our own choices and not be dictated to by others.
The time has come to again exercise our options, our options to eat and feed our children well. In spite of the myriad of unhealthy food options, it is also a time when there are at least some healthy options everywhere, and innumerable “convenient” healthy foods for home. I mean, it doesn’t get easier than a microwave steamer veggie bag. We do not have to fall victim to the unhealthy cultural norms or the mission of the food industry to find our ” bliss points” – the point at which we will abandon any natural signals to stop eating.
For the moment then, It is going to come down to what we are willing to do to protect ourselves and our children from the toxic food environment. The most logical immediate solution is to work a little harder at creating our own food environments, for decreasing exposure to tempting but toxic food stimulus. And as we decrease how much of these salt, sugar, fat and additive laden foods we and our kids consume – our appetite mechanisms will begin to “almost magically” work again and do what they should do – actually tell us we don’t want more! The way it is supposed to be.
Even I have reluctantly, albeit belatedly, seen the difference a good diet makes. I joke about my history as the black sheep of the nutrition community. I am virtually the only person I know with as severe an eating issue as I have had that was actually able to manage my weight by sheer vanity, calorie counting and environmental control. Good to know that can be done, but not the easiest or healthiest way to do it certainly. (In fact, I teach people how to at least do that – manage the numbers – if they are not willing to actually improve the content of their diet. Eating badly does not have to also be a reason to be overweight. Then you have two problems). Embarrassingly enough, it has taken me years to yield to the pressure of my quite vast nutrition knowledge and really change my own diet.
I realize that I am just an experiment of one, and a stone food addict at that, but I have really seen over the years how much my food addiction had been exacerbated by the foods I chose. I always thought that “those nutrition nuts” just didn’t get it when they told us to eat right. First of all, duh! And secondly, if I could have made the required “give ups”, I wouldn’t have had a food issue. Thirdly, I truly didn’t believe that the content of my diet would have that much influence – I believed that I was so eating disordered that content couldn’t possibly help that much. Who knew that with time and even just a little better nutrition appetite mechanisms could reassert themselves?
Now I realize that I would have made my life a lot easier if I had heeded the nutrition community’s advice years ago about upping the lean proteins and healthy fats (especially early in the day) and decreasing all that stuff that turns to sugar fast. Unfortunately, I was a child of the 20 years of misguided don’t-eat-fat advice that has turned us into a nation of hungry diabetics. Oh my God, what a difference. I won’t be so bold as to suggest that I no longer have an eating issue, but my cravings and constant preoccupation with food truly have diminished remarkably. I actually often don’t want more of whatever. Go figure. I actually let others pick the restaurant…well sometimes! Food just has lost some of it’s priority to me. Disappointing sometimes, but such a relief. Now that is a real unexpected gift from the universe. No longer always owned by what I am or am not going to eat…priceless.
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