Wednesday, 01 July 2009

• Why We Are Addicted to Fat, Salt And Sugar

  
  

  That’s right – the food industry has turned us into junkies.
  We crave fat, salt and sugar. This is not part of our DNA. It’s an addiction that we have acquired over the past couple of decades.

  David Kessler, the former head of the Food and Drug Administration has written a book called “The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite.” It addresses the problem of obesity in our society and how the food industry has been contributing to our craving for unhealthy food.

  Dieting doesn’t work.

  Kessler wanted to understand why people continue to eat even when they are no longer hungry.

  “Why is it that Americans continue to crave such foods as potato chips and candy bars long after they feel full? No one has ever explained what’s happening to them and how they can control their eating,” he says in his book.

  Kessler is a 57-year-old pediatrician and professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco.

  He was commissioner of the FDA from 1990 to 1997. He worked hard to improve the labeling of food products and was a vocal opponent of the tobacco industry.  In fact he should get a lot of credit for the recent successful legislation that gives the FDA the responsibility to regulate tobacco products.
  

  Kessler found that there’s a “bliss point” – a combination of sugar, fat and salt – that makes a food practically irresistible.
  

  He says that those ingredients excessively activate the rewards circuits of the brain. They over-stimulate the rewards-circuitry of the brain.

  Can you order healthy food in restaurants?

  Kessler says “Much of what we eat in restaurants is fat on fat on sugar on fat with salt. Pick any dish in any mid-American restaurant. What is spinach dip? Fat on salt with green stuff. Look at the average salad we’re eating. If you look at the bacon, the croutons, the cheese – it’s fats, salts and a little lettuce.”

  He warns that we are conditioned by the food, that it actually affects the motivational circuits in our brains. We get conditioned as kids when we eat tons of fat, salt and sugar all the time. Eventually the neuro-circuitry gets laid down and it stays with us for life.

  Plus there are plenty of cues – visual cues, ads, fast food available everywhere. This stimulus activates your craving and you want food when you aren’t even hungry.

  Some food industry executives admit that fat, salt and sugar are the key components of a successful food product.

  So the food industry designs highly stimulating products, and consumers come back for more. Nothing sells as much as something that stimulates the rewards-circuitry of the brain. It’s all about selling product.

  The solution for Dr. Kessler is not more regulation but changing the perception of bad food.  That’s what happened with cigarettes. Eventually people got turned off by the dangers of smoking. That can happen with the consumption of unhealthy food as well.

  Remember the movie Super Size Me?

  The director Morgan Spurlock described (after a few weeks of only eating at McDonald’s) how he felt after a McDonald’s meal. He thought it was a lot like how a junkie must feel after shooting heroin.

  Right away you feel great as the fat, salt and sugar kicks in and your system goes into overdrive. Soon, after the stuff wears off, you fell like hell – tired, lethargic, cranky. Time for another fix.

  Are you addicted to sugar, salt or fatty foods?

  Written by Ken Currier and posted on http://stuffyourbrainlikes.com/
  

  • 6:10 PM
  • 2157 Views
  • 50 eProps
  • 27 Comments