We Have Forgotten Why We Eat and Its Killing Us
We take for granted that we can eat just about anything we want any time we want. We can order up just about any type of food we desire and have it delivered right to our front door. We don't need to prioritize finding food; it practically finds us in all of its delicious glory. Because the modern era is so prosperous and productive, we seldom spend much time hungry, and people rarely starve. The main struggle we have is choosing what delicious flavor we want to titillate our taste buds. Unfortunately, overly tasty foods, also known as hyper-palatable foods, act on the brain the same way alcohol, meth, cocaine, heroin, and many other drugs do. They cause a dopamine hit that will stimulate reward-seeking behaviors that are difficult to control. Flavorful foods are hijacking our brains. Drugs and hyper-palatable/highly processed foods are precisely the same. In both cases, the immediate short-term pleasure overtakes long-term health and wellness.
Unlike today, in the ancient past finding food was not only a constant struggle; it was a top priority. The pleasure derived from eating had more to do with ending hunger and starvation, the satiety food offered, and much less to do with its flavor. Hunger was a familiar sensation. Anthropologists noted decades ago that the Hadza (a modern hunter-gatherer group) are always hungry. (1) Because traditional diets have no processed foods, metabolism allowed for a better ability to burn fat and handle hunger much more easily. Sadly, today only 12% of Americans have healthy metabolisms. (2)
Observers of the Bushmen of the Kalahari and other current and recently defunct hunter-gatherers note how they did not typically prepare foods the way westerners do. For instance, hunters would remove the organs and eat them in the field because they would spoil in transit. (3) Insects were standard fare. Explorer V. Stefansson noted that the Inuit ate moose Achilles tendon, either raw or cooked, amazingly without chewing them. (4) Today, the Hadza still survive by hunting and gathering. They eat most of their food as-is with minimal preparation. (5) In essence, in the history of the human race, eating was regarded with the highest priority. The taste was unimportant. Everyone ate to live back then.
Bushman With a Crunchy Snack
I want you to think about your own experiences with food for a moment. I bet you can immediately think of a food that you refuse to eat because you can't stand the taste. Now imagine that that food is the only thing standing between you and starvation. Do you still believe that you won't eat it? If you do, you are mistaken. Here is a list of things modern populations have resorted to eating when facing starvation:
pets, rats, insects, worms, leaves, roots, wood, carrion, carpenters glue, leather, library paste, window putty, toothpaste, cough syrup, cold cream, petroleum jelly, cat food, flaxseed meant for cattle, fermented sawdust soup, toothpaste pancakes, face powder cakes, pine needle, grass, thistles, weeds, rotting items from garbage, paper, mud, and finally, human flesh. (6,7,8,9)
Modern Palate-based Eating Compared to Traditional Eating Survival-based Eating
All hunter-gatherer and ancestral groups have their own food traditions based on their local environments that provide as many nutrients as possible. In the late 1930s, Weston A. Price illustrated this in his seminal work entitled Nutrition and Physical Degeneration where he described numerous peoples and their food traditions. In each case, he demonstrated that the local people understood which foods would most help them develop into robust, healthy individuals. He then found nearby populations that had processed foods recently introduced. Additionally, he found the health of the traditional group to be far superior. The group with a modern palate-based processed food diet had crooked teeth, cavities, gum disease, missing teeth, obesity, tuberculosis, and many of the most common ailments seen today. You can read more about the findings of Dr. Price and watch a video in my post here.
Keep in mind that the modern groups could have continued their traditional ways, but chose to eat the processed foods, even though they became sickly. This was a subconscious choice; why would this happen?
Weston Price
The Wrong Foods Hijack Our Brains
In his book called The Hungry Brain (outsmarting the instincts that make us overeat), Stephan Guyenet Ph.D. describes how our instincts lead us to make poor food choices. When presented with processed tasty foods, our brains instinctively make us choose them over traditional, less palatable foods. He goes over the complex neurobiological reasons in his book and simplifies them. I am not going to get into the details in this post. If you are interested, I suggest you get his book; it is a great read. To sum up, in his own words, Dr. Guyenet states, "The more palatable a food, the less filling it was…Palatable foods are those that the brain intuitively views as highly valuable, and the brain is quite good at removing barriers to their consumption." (10)
Highly palatable foods act on the brain the same way as recreational feel-good drugs. They both light up the same part of the brain, causing an immediate reward signal mediated by dopamine. Once activated, this dopamine hit will cause reward-seeking behaviors that are difficult to control. Put simply, our brains get hijacked by highly flavorful foods. Drugs and hyper-palatable/highly processed foods are precisely the same. In both cases, the immediate short-term pleasure overtakes long-term health and wellness.
Our hearts break when we see people in the throes of addiction. The self-destructive behaviors don't seem to make any sense to the non-addicted. We can't understand why someone with the disease of addiction continually seeks short-term highs for misery for the entirety of the hours remaining in each day. I have known many people that have overcome an addiction of one kind or another. They will tell you that nothing matters except feeding their habit. Food addicts will seldom admit that feeding their feeding habits is out of their control. It does not occur to most individuals that they may be addicted to food. We all need to eat or we will die, but food choices matter.
The brain of an addict acts as though death will occur without the fix. This is not the case at all, barring withdrawal from certain substances like alcohol. Strangely, the mind will direct much of its attention to the fix causing the addict to neglect their well-being, which commonly leads to early death anyway.
Food addiction is no different. About 5% of the population qualifies as food addicted. (11) This population needs real help. But what about the rest of us? I would argue that most of us would be better compared to functional alcoholics. Functional alcoholics drink alcohol, which is totally legal and accepted as normal. They get to work on time, pay their bills, and seem normal. But underneath, they are ruining their health, suffering from cravings, are agitated, nervous, tired, sleep poorly, live riskier lives, and have withdrawal symptoms.
Although not precisely the same, many of us have similar symptoms when dealing with our seemingly normal diets. 87% of us have dysfunctional metabolism as a direct result of our food choices. (12) This makes most of us functional foodaholics.
A typical person might eat a buttered bagel in the morning, pizza at lunch, and pasta and meatballs for dinner. It all seems like standard fare, and sadly it is. But I can tell you in no uncertain terms that eating patterns like this will hijack the brain. Weight will rise, inflammation will set in, metabolism will be damaged, along with the quality of life, and even life expectancy may decrease.
What can we do about being functional foodaholics? In his book, Dr. Guyenet states that a weight management "secret" you'll rarely find in a diet book: eat simple food. (9) I can tell you it works. Believe it or not, eating plain potatoes exclusively results in weight loss, and less food consumption because of its simplicity. As some of you may know, I have been strictly eating a diet with absolutely no processed foods, the only exception being whey protein powder. I and countless others have enjoyed the benefits of a simple whole-foods diet:
Weight loss.
Losing cravings for flavorful food.
Satiety after meals.
Better Sleep.
More energy.
Better concentration.
Only eating when hungry.
Try to eat to live, not live to eat. Trying to titillate your taste buds at the expense of your health is a losing strategy. Choose whole foods and throw away the processed ones. This is an achievable goal! Take it one meal at a time, then one day at a time, and ultimately you can change. You are worth it, after all, some foods are as dangerous as illicit street drugs. Read my previous blog on how to make change easier if you want to hit the ground running. If you are curious about what to eat, click here.