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Cathy
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Why Modern Food is Addictive and How to Break Its Hold on You
Why Modern Food is Addictive and How to Break Its Hold on You
Can food really be addictive? Anybody who has ever polished off an entire bag of potato chips or box of breakfast cereal in the blink of an eye would be inclined to suspect as much, and it certainly would explain a lot if food, like addictive drugs, did indeed have the ability to render us powerless to its allure - like why, even with our current national obsession with diet programs, diet books, diet foods, and nutritional supplements, we still find ourselves in the midst of a full-blown obesity epidemic which seems to worsen with each passing year. In light of our nation-wide fixation on health, it seems increasingly strange that more Americans than ever are finding it nearly impossible to lose excess weight despite their most enthusiastic efforts.
Has our collective willpower suddenly become so lacking, or has the deck actually been stacked against us in the form of a food supply specifically altered to increase our cravings and reduce our satiety? As science begins to uncover the effects of modern food, and food additives on our eating habits, it seems that our dietary failures may, in fact, be driven more by the chemical and physical manipulation of our food than by our simple lack of willpower.
While, in the strictest sense, there is no universally accepted definition of what makes a substance "addictive," in taking what we currently do know about addiction and applying it to food, many of the much-sought-after solutions to the obesity and health crisis become shockingly clear.
A Recipe For Disaster
At the dawning of the 21st Century we find ourselves immersed in a food supply which researchers have discovered is not only dangerously lacking in essential nutrients, but is also laced with chemical additives which just so happen to immensely stimulate our appetite.
Neuroscientists have begun to realize that as we eat these foods, our bodies and brains cry out with more intense hunger signals, not only for the nutrients we're still lacking, but also for the food chemicals we've become addicted to. The result? We become literally and biologically compelled to eat massive amounts of these exact nutrient-poor and highly caloric foods, further accelerating our downward spiral into obesity and disease.
Truly, a recipe for disaster.
So, the questions naturally arise: How did we get here? How did the nutrient-rich foods which nourished generations past give way to the conglomeration of chemicals we call our food supply today? Why does this modern food trigger our appetite so ferociously? And most importantly, what are the simple changes we need to make to break our addiction to these foods once and for all?
In this edition of the Integrated Supplements Newsletter, we'll begin to take a brief look at the fascinating history of food production and promotion in this country. In outlining some of the drastic changes in our food supply in just the past century alone, we'll be able to see very clearly the association between an increasingly nutrient-poor, chemically-laden food supply, and this countries' declining level of health. We'll also look specifically at which food additives and which nutrient deficiencies in particular, may be most responsible for creating the unnatural and insatiable food cravings driving the epidemic of overweight, obesity and ill-health in our country today.
Food and Addiction - A Profitable Combination
In what is perhaps the most infamous illustration of the overlapping of food science and pharmacology, 19th Century druggist John Pemberton, in an effort to create a new patent medicine, developed what he considered to be a therapeutic drink by combining extracts of the coca leaf, kola nut and sugar syrup. His concoction eventually evolved into what is far and away the most popular and recognizable soft drink of all time; and while the current version of his soft drink no longer contains the obviously addictive cocaine, the fact that Pemberton's cola has spawned an international business empire unmatched by nearly any company in history, is perhaps testament to the financial possibilities which lie in creating "addictive" foods. The company built around this drink is, quite simply, the world's most widely recognized brand with annual revenues of over 24 billion dollars.
And although spiking a drink with cocaine, caffeine, and sugar is certainly one of the more overt instances of manipulating brain chemistry to drive demand for a consumer product, it is far from the only one. As our insights into the interaction between food and brain chemistry increase, it is clear that many of the processing techniques and food additives widely employed by the food industry today are in fact altering our physiology to make us crave ever more nutrient-poor and calorie loaded processed foods. It has even been found that many of the "pseudo-foods" prevalent in our diet today cause chemical changes within our body shockingly similar to those of addictive and harmful pharmaceutical and narcotic drugs.
In fairness, food producers of the early to mid 20th Century may have been able to plead ignorance with regard to these effects of the food they produced, but current food manufacturers can no longer do so. The harmful and addictive nature of their wares is now well documented in the scientific literature and is no longer open for legitimate scientific debate.
Realize however, that despite how much you may hear the food and supplement companies proclaim that they've accepted the challenge of helping us battle the obesity epidemic, that a country of ravenously hungry, and insatiable eating machines is simply good for their business. So, don't expect the companies who are largely responsible for causing the obesity and healthcare crisis in America to offer up much in the way of a viable solution.
A true solution would obviously revolve around finding ways to break food addiction, not perpetuate it, and as we've shown in previous newsletters, the so-called "solutions" sometimes offered up by the "health" food and nutritional supplement industries actually serve to increase food cravings and worsen food addiction. These supposedly "healthy" products are often little more than the exact same nutrient-poor mixes of chemicals, tweaked slightly, then dressed up in "healthy" packaging.
As historical evidence, consider the easily observable fact that all of the diet-specific foods introduced by the food industry over the past several decades haven't done anything except make our waistlines larger, and our health worse.
Riding the "fat-phobia" of the last decades of the 20th Century, many may remember the line of wildly popular low-fat snacks released by a major cookie company in the early 1990's. This companies' own market research showed that consumers simply ate the same (or greater!) number of calories from these altered snacks than from their full-fat counterpart. A similar phenomenon was noticed a decade later with snacks introduced during the low carbohydrate craze, and the lower calorie "portion control" snacks which are currently popular seem destined to suffer the same fate.
Why?
Because these products; regardless of their levels of carbohydrates, fats, or calories; all serve to actually INCREASE our CRAVINGS for, or ADDICTION to, food. The food industry is a lot of things, but they're not stupid - they've studied brain chemistry extensively, and they know how to make us crave their products. They've been doing it for years.
Note also, that while these products are failures in delivering on their promises, they are certainly NOT failures in the eyes of the food industry. All of these products, which have allowed the food industry to cash in on whatever nutritional fad happened to be popular at any given time, have been extremely profitable.
How it All Began
Since the end of World War II, when the large-scale industrialization of our food supply began, some of the world's brightest scientific minds have worked tirelessly to give the cheapest and lowest quality food ingredients the appearance and flavor of high quality foods through the use of processing and chemical additives. Probably unbeknownst to these scientists is the fact that their overwhelming success in this task has altered the biological function of food at the most fundamental level, with devastating consequences for public health. And all the more frightening is the fact that if these food chemists (and the companies' PR departments) do their job well, we'll never even notice these additives or the adulteration of our food, and we'll almost certainly never associate them with our gradually declining health as the years pass.
But what exactly is this "industrially processed" food and how and why did processed food become so prevalent in this country despite steadily increasing evidence of its dangers? In the broadest sense the answer can be found by looking at the cultural environment from which these foods arose.
In the 1950's in America, during the era of "better living through chemistry," well-meaning but misguided food chemists believed that their processed food products could actually improve upon nature's design, and it's likely that they had no idea what the long-term effects of their concoctions would be. By the time the harmful nature of some foods and food additives was discovered, the die had already been cast and these foods were already a major part of the dietary landscape of this country; they also happened to be very profitable and, in so far as they had addictive qualities, they were quickly in very high demand by an unsuspecting public.
Let's Take a Look at a Hypothetical Situation. . .
Imagine it's the middle part of the twentieth century in America. We've recently emerged victorious from World War II and the country is in the midst of a period of economic growth and optimism like we've never before experienced. The world is safe for democracy once again, and in this era of increased security our attention has turned from fighting wars to building families. What is soon to be known as the baby boom is now in full swing.
Imagine also that you happen to work for a rapidly growing food producing company and that you are nobly accepting the challenge set before you of helping to feed all of these new Americans. You're eager, and ambitious, and you also happen to be fully immersed in the golden age of food science - a time when the technological advances in food processing have made it possible for food producers like you to create an absolutely mind-boggling amount of processed food which, unlike traditional foods, can travel long distances, and will remain edible for very long periods of time.
You have at your disposal the best minds which science has to offer and a nearly unlimited budget for marketing and shaping public perception. A particularly promising avenue for promoting your wares is a new invention - television. Everybody seems to have one these days, and television advertising is likely to be the perfect vehicle for gaining nation-wide acceptance for what is rapidly becoming a new era of convenient and economical food.
With the combination of television advertising and food processing, food no longer needs to be produced and sold locally, but can now be promoted and shipped across the entire nation. And this is all happening so quickly, too - by the 1950's this "era of abundance" is already in full swing.
Among some of your most notable and long-lasting achievements to date, you and your fellow culinary scientists have perfected the process of "hydrogenating " liquid oils, chemically converting them into solidified and stable products like margarine and shortening; you've developed advanced methods of pasteurizing milk, heating it to high enough temperatures to kill any potentially harmful organisms it may contain; you've developed methods of refining grains to rid the plant matter of "unnecessary" bran, making a calorie-dense refined flour which is easily incorporated into baked products, and even able to be bent, twisted, and molded into any imaginable shape for use in the latest craze - ready-to-eat breakfast cereals.
As these advances in food processing have made food more resistant to spoilage and available to more people, the costs of disposing of rancid foods are reduced, as are your companies' costs of production. Clearly, selling more and more of this sort of processed food on a nationwide scale is becoming extremely profitable.
But the best part about your job, as you are told again and again, is that you can feel good about your contribution to mankind. You and your colleagues are, after all, helping to feed millions of Americans and even helping to finally end the scourge of world hunger.
Yet even in light of the virtuous nature of your pursuit, the question naturally arises - why stop there? The profits on these newfangled foods certainly have you sitting pretty, and people seem to love the convenience, versatility, and variety of the foods you're offering - they can't eat your products fast enough. So, you wonder as any good businessperson would, is there a way to sell more?
Addictive Food 101
Being an astute observer of your market, you notice that there are two processes in particular which, when employed, cause your customers to consume massive amounts of food. It is these two processes more than any others, which hold the key for creating the addictive food we find so prevalent today.
First of all, you notice that certain chemicals, when added in precise amounts, make the resulting foods nearly irresistible to your customers. The most notable of these chemicals has recently arrived on US shores, and is called MSG, or Monosodium Glutamate. This chemical has been used in Japan for decades, and was first noticed by American GIs during World War II when it was found that the MSG-laden food rations enjoyed by Japanese soldiers tasted so significantly better than the bland, lifeless rations that the American soldiers were forced to eat. Luckily, MSG is extremely cheap, and its flavor-enhancing-properties allow you the added luxury of using lower quality food and fewer spices.
Similarly, you notice that the calorie-free artificial sweetener saccharin seems to also cause an increase in food consumption, especially sweets (little do you know at this time that other chemicals which dramatically increase appetite and food consumption - like the artificial sweetener aspartame, are just around the corner).
The second process which you notice to cause an almost insatiable appetite for your foods is the refining of grains. It seems that the more you fiddle with grain foods - taking out the fibrous bran and baking, puffing, molding, and extruding the grain into all sorts of fun shapes and sizes - the more of it people eat. You come to the conclusion that the common denominator behind all of these processes is that they serve to remove fiber from the whole grain. You know that fiber fills people up quickly and that it is likely the lack of fiber in these foods which is causing your customers to eat so much. But so what? Fiber can't be absorbed or digested so it's not even a nutrient; and when you refine it away, people sure do seem to eat a lot more breads, cakes, cookies and all of those profitable breakfast cereals. And after all, without fortified breakfast cereals, how would you ever get all of those American children to consume the vitamins they need?
So, as you dutifully march ahead in your pursuit of better nutrition through science, you scarcely concern yourself with the possible long-term health ramifications of the foods you're creating.
After all, it's the 1950s - James Watson and Francis Crick have recently solved the "mystery of life" discovering the structure of the DNA molecule; and in so doing, they've "proved" that our looks, our traits, and even our long-term health, are all "genetic," programmed into our cells at birth. You figure, as long as you can keep people from dying from malnutrition, the crap shoot of the gene pool will see to it whether the people eating the foods you create will live a long, healthy life, or a short one riddled with disease.
If We Had Known Then What We Know Now. . .
This hypothetical example may be a bit simplistic, but it shows clearly the natural progression of our food supply in this country - how an increased amount of addictive foods created an increased demand for these foods, which obviously created hefty profits for their producers. It's a vicious cycle which continues to this day.
In the name of increasing profits by giving the American public more of what they so desperately crave, the obvious progression of our food supply has been characterized largely by a steady increase in the amount of fiber-poor refined grains and appetite-stimulating food additives and sweeteners in our diets.
The repercussions of this progression should now be obvious. Fast forward to today, the early years of the twenty first century, and it's clear that the epidemic of diet-related disorders continues to grow at alarming rates. Diabetes currently affects an estimated 20 million Americans, with an additional 45 million prediabetics likely soon to follow. Sixty Five percent of Americans are overweight and over 30 percent are severely overweight or obese. And these numbers are all predicted to become worse in the coming years.
Our current health crises are a direct result of the increase in refined, processed and chemical-ridden food introduced to our food supply after World War II, and most people alive today have lived their entire lives on such foods. By some estimates, within the next few decades the average American life expectancy is actually predicted to experience an unprecedented decrease by five years (77.6 years to 72.6 years). It has become clear to anyone willing to look at the evidence that nearly every basic nutritional assumption made by the food scientists of the mid twentieth century has turned out to be dangerously incorrect and frighteningly short-sighted.
And yet the vast majority of our population receives not only their food, but also the major part of their nutritional "knowledge" (which is at least 50 years obsolete) from these same food-producing companies - a conflict of interest if there ever was one. Food industry propaganda, not only through commercial advertising, but through massive social influence, pervades into literally every aspect of our lives. The food industry's awesome power can be observed in the highest reaches of academia in the training of our doctors, nutritionists, and dieticians; it infects our children through marketing thinly veiled as nutritional curricula and school lunch programs, and it even heavily influences our government through political lobbying and public-health initiatives like the Food Pyramid.
It is quite probable, if you are like the majority of Americans, that nearly every idea and assumption you currently have about nutrition has been flat out paid for by the food industry in one way or another. The perpetuation of these obsolete ideas is responsible not only for the food industry's massive profits, but also for our rapidly declining health.
Lest you still happen to be one of the countless millions of Americans whose mind the food industry has succeeded in fully hijacking, it is important to state in no uncertain terms a few of the more obvious examples of how objective research has advanced our nutritional knowledge since the golden era of food production of the 1950s.
1) The intimate relationship between diet and health is a fact that no reputable scientist would currently deny. Even the popular notion that genetics control our fate has been all but discarded by many scientists. The fact is that both nutrition and our environment are now known to play enormous roles in the expression of the traits coded in our genes.
2) The hydrogenated and refined oils found in margarine and shortenings, which were widely touted as beneficial in the prevention of heart disease, have turned out to be even worse for cardiovascular health than the saturated fats which they were meant to replace. In the final analysis, these artificial fats merely served the profit motives of their producers and not our health at all. Their harmful nature was downplayed, and hidden from the American public for decades.
3) Dietary fiber which was so carelessly discarded from grains (the term dietary fiber wasn't even coined until 1953), is now known to play an absolutely enormous role in protecting human health. While it was initially thought of as a useless, indigestible component of plant foods, thousands of studies over the past several decades have shown conclusive evidence that certain types of dietary fiber reduce risk factors of the most prevalent degenerative diseases including heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.
Additionally, the processing of grains strips away vital nutrients which are simply not added back by the enrichment or fortification of grain products. One notable nutritionist has summarized the situation well in saying that the enrichment of grain is like giving up a dollar and getting back forty cents - a losing proposition by any standard.
The fact that our food supply today suffers the very same shortcomings as that of the 1950's (only worse) shows clearly that, despite what the food industry may want you to believe, our food supply very rarely reflects the latest advancements in nutritional science. The food producers have, in fact, done worse than nothing in helping us to address our health problems through nutrition. In utilizing what can be at best described as questionable marketing and educational tactics (especially towards children) and in downplaying or denying the effects of certain foods on our appetite, the food industry as a whole is largely to blame for the deteriorating state of health in this country.
The industry is sure to reply, as they always do, that their foods are merely supplying an existing consumer demand, but what they conveniently fail to mention is that, similar to the tactics of the cigarette companies, this demand was strategically created by lifelong pervasive marketing, the illusion of scientific credibility, and most despicably, by the exploitation of the effects of foods on brain chemistry.
We've reached a critical point in this country where even well-educated and "strong-willed" citizens find themselves largely defenseless against the pervasive propaganda, and addictive foods concocted by the food industry. Consumers would be well served to always remember that today, as in the 1950's, fiber-poor refined grains, refined flours, and taste-enhancing food additives are all very profitable food ingredients, and the food industry will fight tooth and nail to, first and foremost, protect these profits even as they champion themselves as defenders of our health.
Who's On Our Side?
If public health authorities wanted to end the healthcare crisis in this country, or if the food industry truly wanted to end the obesity crisis in this country, or if you, as an individual, wanted to maintain or regain your health, there are some very simple changes which would need to take place:
1) Stop the use of all refined or heated oils (including, but not limited to, all hydrogenated oils).
2) Stop the use of all food additives which have been shown to cause harm, increase appetite, inhibit metabolism, and cause obesity. Some of these include:
Artificial Sweeteners
Artificial Colors
Carrageenan
MSG (and hidden sources of free glutmate like):
Hydrolyzed Protein
Yeast Extract
3) Avoid refined grains, and put dietary fiber back in the diet, ideally 25-35 grams daily.
While these tactics may be simple to understand, they can certainly take some practice to implement, especially if you find yourself relying on convenient, prepackaged, or restaurants foods - the "cash cows" of the food industry.
With practice, however, employing these three tactics on a grand scale would start to bring the obesity and healthcare problems in this country to a screeching halt. But you'll almost certainly never see this information presented to you in as straightforward and simple a manner as you do here.
Why?
Because, in a theme that repeats again and again, all three of these factors revolve around major profit centers for the food industry. We've shown in previous Integrated Supplements Newsletters (January 2007) how refined hydrogenated oils were introduced into our food supply over a century ago simply as a cost-cutting measure to improve the food industry's bottom line - with blatant disregard for public health.
The other two factors, food additives and low-fiber foods, not only make food cheaper to produce, but they both also increase the "addictive" nature of a food as well - a double bonus if you're a food producer, but a double whammy if you happen to be one of the vast majority of Americans who subsist almost entirely on low-fiber and chemically-laden foods.
Whole Grain and Organic
So, it's not at all likely that any public heath initiatives, or food rollouts aimed at making us healthier will actually fully address these issues. Any steps taken in the right direction will surely be painfully slow and so minor as to give the American public little more than a false sense of security. Case in point, major breakfast cereal producers are currently patting themselves on the back for introducing "whole grains" into their sugar and chemical-laden cereals, and a seemingly oxymoronic "whole grain" white bread was recently unveiled by one of the nations largest bread producers. While higher in fiber than regular white bread, this bread which took food chemists almost a decade to "perfect" still contains approximately 40% less fiber than real whole wheat bread, and dozens of chemical food additives.
It's very easy to see, as many consumers become more aware and involved in taking charge of their own health, why there has been such a powerful backlash against many of the large food producing companies in recent years. And although food producing companies (often times it seems at a snails pace and with much foot-dragging) will, in fact, respond to strong consumer demand with altered products, always remember, that they still have some of the best minds in science continually working to make their foods addictive.
Along the same lines of the whole grain phenomenon, our food supply is in the midst undergoing yet another great metamorphosis even as we speak. Many are calling it the "organic revolution," and while meeting organic standards is definitely a step in the right direction, remember that food producers are eager to use public demand for their own benefit, and not necessarily ours. Even within the organic realm, food producers still have the same tricks up their sleeves to see to it that we continue to eat as much food as possible. Although, many foods currently happen to be offered in organic varieties, food companies are being allowed to offer things like fiber-poor "organic" white breads, "organic" puffed wheat cereals, and "organic" foods with appetite stimulating chemicals like hydrolyzed protein and yeast extracts. They're secretly employing the same old tricks, just with new names for the 21st Century.
It seems that over the past 60 years that the food industry has created somewhat of a Frankenstein's monster of food - even in their most maniacal fantasies, they could never have predicted how powerfully out of control their creations would become. But inadvertent or not, the addictive nature of certain foods is a problem we can no longer afford to ignore.
In the next issue of the Integrated Supplements Newsletter we'll take a closer look at how processed food influences our body and mind, and give specific recommendations on which foods and nutritional supplements can help you break the vicious cycle of food addiction. We will show that there are, in fact, very simple tactics which can help you to achieve vibrant health, optimal weight, and perhaps most importantly, peace of mind amidst a food supply gone mad.
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