“They definitely put drugs in that”
Trigger Warning: I will talk about food, eating habits and disordered eating. Please always seek help if you are struggling with any of these issues.
You’re strolling past the pretzel place at the shopping centre, you get excited… you and your mates do a couple laps to get free samples.
Your nose perked up, if you’re like me you might have started salivating.
Same story when you walk past a subway sandwich shop, a chicken and chip shop, a desert place?
All these things snatch your attention due to our evolution, the same way your evolution may encourage you to have sex it encourages you to eat.
That way we will survive, reproduce and live on.
Everytime I get a sip of McDonalds coke I find myself thinking “They HAVE to put drugs in this”. I don’t even really like fizzy drinks. I DO however love McDonalds coke.
Processed food is your brain, in many way, comparable to hard drugs like heroin or cocaine.
There are several things the fast food industry does to weaponise our evolution against us.
Millennia of natural selection has meant that we have a strong preference for foods high in sugars and fats - high in energy.
Those are the food most likely to keep us alive for the longest and with the most immediate effect.
Processed food and sugar are absorbed very quickly into the blood and so have the most immediate benefits in terms of energy.
Energy is much more highly favoured in terms of our evolution than nutrition, hence you don’t do laps around Westfield if they're handing out free carrots
High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) commonly described as ‘added sugar’ is one of the key culprits in establishing ‘food addiction’.
It’s in your pasta sauce, your coffee, your morning toast or cereal…
There are few things apart from fresh produce that are not treated with added sugar.
Cravings for sweet and also salty foods can feel and look very similar to the more recognised experiences of addition like a drug or alcohol addiction.
The reasons for this are that most of us now live on a high-in-sugar diet because of how much of it we unknowingly consume in our diets.
The body naturally craves these high-energy foods and with anything that we over consume, it develops dependency.
A handful of experiments have shown that if you give a rat access to sugar that it can consume whenever it likes, it will not binge on the sugar and it will not increase its daily intake over time.
If you give another rat access to sugar for only say 12 hours of the day, not only will it binge on the sugar, its daily intake will increase over time.
The rat will then show all the neurological signs of withdrawal once that sugar diet is withdrawn completely.
It is the act of binging that is extremely harmful. This is when we cause an unusual spike of dopamine in the body, much like we take take drugs and experience a high.
It appears to me, and please forgive me, that we have become much like these rats.
We have also restricted our access to foods high in sugar and fat whether it be mentally or physically.
We are a society that encourages restriction, dieting and over-scrutinised eating.
Restriction often naturally leads to binging. Something as innocent as following a diet most of the week and then having ‘cheat day’.
Most of us restrict ourselves in some ways when it comes to these treats, you don’t always buy the pretzel, you don’t always get take away, you try not to have that second cupcake.
I would argue that it is these behaviours that lead more often to disordered eating and patterns and behaviours that mimic those of addiction very closely.
The most important thing to note is that food is not inherently harmful. Of course an unbalanced diet can cause us many problems.
But perhaps if we removed fear from all foods, we would eat more naturally in moderation.
I would also argue that intuitive eating is the best solution to an unhealthy relationship with food.
By eliminating restriction, mental or physiological, we are more likely to avoid binges and therefore withdrawal.
How do you feel about intuitive eating? Or food addiction? Let me know, I’d love to hear your opinion.