Food Addiction- Intentional, Calculated, and Deliberate
We started with a historical look at humans and food.
We covered how our food is regulated, what’s in it, and where a lot of that stuff comes from. We learned about ultra processed food. We learned how the people with the tokens use food to control populations. We talked about food apartheid and food scarcity.
We learned how little regulation/protection go into our “food safety,” and how our system is actually designed to resist that regulation.
Now Let’s look at the ADDICTION component.
Have you ever wondered why it’s so hard to put it down? Big Tobacco bought food companies and ENGINEERED foods to be addictive. (Remember, I promised you a punchline. This was it.)
Casomorphin and Gluteomorphin
These are NOT mighty morphine power rangers, but they are mighty morphines, and they come from wheat and dairy.
Sugar and Umami
I really didn’t want to believe it for a long time, but Sugar really is a pretty big deal. It just seemed so impossible to give up, so it was hard to accept.
Evolutionary Predisposition
When Fat and Carbs Combine
Our diet is also closely connected to our brains in a LOT of ways. It’s not JUST brain fog.
Let’s look at the brain a little closer…
Here’s the thing- our health and wellbeing were never a matter of consideration of the ones with the most tokens. They don’t exist to help us, to care for us, and our value is only in terms of the tokens we can generate for them. It BENEFITS them to keep us addicted and in poor health. Then they can sell us both the disease and the cure.
It behooves them to condition us to think that they’re looking out for us.
Diet and our Mental Health
Our brains are not only affected by the nutrients we are lacking, but all of those additives have effects as well, and it’s just under-researched because it isn’t the story the people with the tokens want to tell.
So in addition to being addictive, they are highly dysregulating.
Wonder why there is much more depression, anxiety, adhd, bipolar, etc. PART of it is absolutely that we actually have the means to diagnose these disorders, and have reduced the stigma. Part of it is that being American is making us sick.
When I was growing up in the 80s, there was a huge focus on low-fat, low calorie diets. I was shamed if I ate the skin of the chicken being told it would be on my thighs later. I was forced to eat a lot of dry potatoes. My family also felt I should forego the salt because I was so unhealthy, and they didn’t want me to have a heart attack. They were just looking out for my well being of course.
This also meant I overate “approved foods,” like crackers. I never understood a serving size of 6 crackers, and I never felt satiated. I became a compulsive overeater who would sneak food, and felt ashamed any time I ate in front of others.
I qualified for free lunch, which is incredible, but that also meant that my food choices were being provided by people who classified a slice of cardboard pizza as a fruit.
By the time we’re old enough to make educated food choices, our bodies and minds are already addicted.
Susan Powter screamed at me to “Stop the Insanity,” and just stop putting food in my face, and it increased my shame and my food intake.
I was desperate and everywhere I looked there were offers of an answer to my weight problem- at a cost.
I blamed myself. I felt like I didn’t deserve help. I was driven by the need to relieve my constant cortisol levels by eating junk food, and it was never enough. It gave me something to look forward to.
There were days that junk food gave me a reason to live. There are days it still does.
I was desperate for help. I tried to follow the Food Guide Pyramid, which turned out to be just another fad diet in a see of solutions that didn’t work.
Any time I stayed up past my bedtime, the self-help infomercials would tell me I could shed the pounds if I just bought the book, subscribe to the food, ordered the new exercise machine that was finally going to be infused with enough magic to fix me.
I tried Slimfast. I tried stimulants. I never ate breakfast. I smoked my lunch. I tried just soups. I tried anorexia. I tried bulimia.
I would live for the modicum of approval that came from going without, restricting myself, and becoming less, while my body became more.
If self-hatred was a weight loss spell I’d have been a super model.
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