Authors: Mark Hyman
Tags: #Health & Fitness / Diet & Nutrition / Diets, #Health & Fitness / Body Cleansing & Detoxification
The mantra of the government and food industry is that people should just eat less, choose a “balanced diet,” and exercise more. How’s that working out for you?
Food addiction is a biochemical problem, not an emotional one. It makes me furious to see patient after patient blame himself or herself for his or her weight problems and diabesity. Yes, we all have choices, and personal empowerment and responsibility are important, but they are not enough if we are trapped in a food coma induced by the toxic influences of sugar and processed foods.
No one chooses to be fat. If you grew up not being able to identify a vegetable because you never ate one, if your school had only deep-fried food or the kind that came out of a box or a can and was stocked with vending machines full of sweetened sports drinks, juices, or sodas, or was ringed by convenience stores where you could buy a sixty-four-ounce Big Gulp on your way home every day, it’s no surprise that your habits and taste buds got wired that way.
If nearly every restaurant chain near you serves jumbo portions of sugar and fat and salt, if your workplace lunchroom is a toxic food dump, good luck staying healthy. If, unbeknownst to you, your yogurt contains more sugar than a Coke, and the main ingredient in your barbecue sauce is high-fructose corn syrup, how can the food industry point the finger at you for not taking personal responsibility?
Peer pressure to fit in is strong, and Big Food knows this. Big Food preys on people’s desire to be eating and drinking the “in” thing and uses manipulation to get customers hooked. Remember the Coca-Cola ad, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke”? Let’s get the whole world
hooked! Now North Korea and Cuba are the only countries to which Coke is not distributed. Mission accomplished!
I found a 7UP ad from nearly sixty years ago featuring a baby being fed the soda. The ad proudly boasted that this eleven-month-old was not, “by any means,” their youngest customer. The ad with the image of the happy-faced baby went on with gems like these:
7-Up is so pure, so wholesome you can even give it to babies and feel good about it.
By the way, Mom, when it comes to toddlers—if they like to be coaxed to drink their milk, try this: Add 7-Up to their milk in equal parts, pouring the 7-Up gently into the milk. It’s a wholesome combination—and it works!
“Wholesome combination”? Who are they kidding?
The messages today are subtler, but clearly just as powerful. I remember working in an urgent-care clinic as a resident when a woman came in for an appointment and brought along her seven-month-old baby in a carriage. I saw that the baby was drinking a brown liquid in a baby bottle. I asked the mother what it was and she replied, “Coke.” I asked, “Why are you feeding your baby Coke?!” She said, “Because he likes it!”
Of course he did! He was biologically programmed to love sugar and was already an addict at seven months.
When sugar and junk are promoted and accessible in almost every school in America and in the convenience stores that surround them, can we really blame the kids for tripling the childhood obesity rate over the last few decades and for the epidemic of “adult” onset, or type 2, diabetes in seven-year-olds?
If we are feeding our infants, toddlers, and preteens addictive foods and they go on to become obese teenagers and adults hooked on these foods, how can we blame them for lack of “personal responsibility”? There are 600,000 processed food items in our environment, 80 percent of which contain added sugar. Most people have very little opportunity
to make (or even understand) healthy choices before the food industry influences their palates and their default food choices for a lifetime.
And yet industry and government still love the personal responsibility story. It allows the food industry to push its addictive products without limit and the government to avoid any politically risky social reform. But when companies profit from getting people to consume more and more of their products—products that are designed to light up our brain’s primitive reward center and that have been scientifically proven to cause obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer—we have a problem.
When our government policies and agricultural subsidies have supported the flood of an extra 700 calories per person per day into the food system since 1970 (mostly in the form of high-fructose corn syrup from corn and trans fats), we have a problem.
When government food stamps (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) pay $4 billion a year for sodas for the poor (29 million servings a day, or 10 billion servings a year) and then the government must pay through Medicaid and Medicare for the obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer caused by soda, we have a problem.
Taylor Swift promotes Diet Coke, and Kobe Bryant promotes Gatorade. What if celebrities were featured in billion-dollar ad campaigns aimed at getting kids to try crack cocaine or heroin, all with the promise of a better, happier life? We would all be incensed. But that is essentially what’s happening with addictive foods and beverages today in America and, increasingly, around the world.
Nothing less than a comprehensive social and political transformation is needed to hold government and the food and agriculture industries accountable and thus change policy and behavior on a grand scale. We all have to work toward that, and I have outlined many ways to do so in the “Take Back Our Health” section of my book
The Blood Sugar Solution,
and in
Part VI
of this book.
But in the meantime, we can’t wait for food companies to act against their own self-interest, or for the government to regulate the food
industry’s addictive products and underhanded marketing strategies. We can’t wait to free ourselves from the prison of food addiction.
Yes, the food industry has hijacked our taste buds, our brain chemistry, and our biology, but I will show you the keys to breaking free of cravings and life-destroying food addictions. Think of it as a Navy SEAL raid and recovery mission for your health.
Before we get into the active phase of that mission, though, I want you to really understand the science of food addiction. I want to show you precisely how your biology has been influenced. You’ll likely be astonished! Please try to read these chapters before diving in. The more aware you are of the biological forces at play—both in terms of how your cravings have been chemically induced and of how easy it is to break free—the more you’ll get out of this program. You’ll understand not only why this detox works the magic it does, but how to ensure that you never again fall prey to the manipulation of the food industry.
Even more, I’ll present to you the overwhelming evidence that
being overweight is not your fault
. Clearly seeing and owning up to your powerlessness
in the face of an addiction is the first step of any twelve-step program. We have to start there. Then we can heal.
What I always hated about diets was that I had to think about food every minute of the day. I watched thin people and how they interacted with food, but I was never able to really apply it to my life until now. Now I eat when I’m hungry. I know what’s good for me and I eat those foods, and when I’m done, I stop. That’s how people without weight issues go about their days. I’m no longer consumed by “Should I eat this, can I eat that?” Now I can think about other things in my life besides food. I love good food, but I’m not consumed by it. That to me is living.
You don’t get fat without thinking about how and why. I have had a lot of time to think about what works and what doesn’t work, and this program seems different to me because it’s freeing. People are slaves to food in so many ways in our society, and it’s awful. It’s so liberating to see that we really can break free of that control.
—JACKIE WOODS
A little earlier, I mentioned Kelly Brownell, PhD, the former director of the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. Dr. Brownell recently sent me a copy of his new textbook,
Food and Addiction, A Comprehensive Handbook
. For the first time, it assembles all the latest research into one comprehensive volume on how food addiction is the central driver of obesity and related diseases in our society. I want to share some of Dr. Brownell’s most startling findings with you.
Let’s break this down into two parts: how food addiction affects our behavior and how it affects our biology.
I was a sugar and carbohydrate addict. I couldn’t go a day without something sugary. I was like a vampire… I had to have it! I sensed, though, that if I could go a few days without it, I could get past it.
I started the 10-Day Detox and was surprised that I didn’t crave sugar. But the way the food plan was designed, I didn’t feel hungry or anxious in any way. I was calm, the food was good, and I didn’t miss the bad stuff I was eating.
Every day I was on the program I felt more in control… that the food wasn’t in control. Before, I used to think, “I know eating this food is bad for me, I know I shouldn’t have it, and yet I can’t NOT have it.” I couldn’t stop. I didn’t understand that the food literally had physical control over me and that my willpower—even though I had it—wasn’t enough. I didn’t realize that I was so entrenched in the addiction of the processed foods. They’re right with that commercial, you can’t have just one! You’re sitting there eating it, knowing you shouldn’t, yet you cannot stop. I noticed right away that I felt like I was in control over the food, and that was a huge shift.
—JACKIE WOODS
Just as with any other addictive drug, sugar and processed foods cause a temporary high followed by a crash, leading to a vicious cycle of abuse. Food addicts, the research shows, are no different from alcoholics or cocaine addicts. Their lives become increasingly out of control. As their health deteriorates, they gain weight, suffer from arthritis, have trouble getting around or just tying their shoes, and eventually get high blood pressure, diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, and even dementia and depression.
Disordered eating behavior interferes with work or school and family activities. Think about it: It’s nearly impossible to focus on your work if you’re consumed by thoughts of raiding your colleague’s candy dish. It’s tough to enjoy a family holiday party with your brain screaming at you to go get another handful of chips and dip.
Despite wanting to change or stop, those with food addiction cannot resist—even in the face of significant emotional or physical harm to themselves and those they love. They hide their addiction, they worry and obsess about cutting down, all against a backdrop of shame, embarrassment, and denial. They eat a whole sheet cake in the middle of the night in the dark. They say, “It’s like someone takes over my body and I can’t stop eating. I want to be locked up. I can’t keep living this way.”
The bottom line is this: Your biology controls your behavior, not the other way around. Yes, if you willfully decide to eat three packages of Chips Ahoy cookies, your biology will change. But for most of us, most of the time, our biochemistry dictates our behavior.
Our automatic behaviors are controlled by our primitive brain, the neurological machine we have in common with dinosaurs and other reptiles. These automatic behaviors include eating, our fight-or-flight response, and reproduction. This explains why we have so much trouble with food and relationships! According to the primitive brain, survival depends on our avoiding pain (danger) and seeking pleasure (sustenance and safety). When we have a life trauma, this part of our brain is on high alert, making us hypervigilant and protecting us against future threats. This mechanism is so powerful that it can even trigger full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder.
When our brains are bombarded with sugar, a potent pleasure inducer, we become addicted to that pleasure. Willpower and conscious choice are no match for these powerful, ancient drives for survival.
Here’s where things get interesting. A 2009 study by Dr. Serge H. Ahmed,
Is Sugar as Addictive as Cocaine?,
published in the journal
Food and Addiction,
proved that
sugar was eight times as addictive as cocaine.
When I first read this, it was hard for me to believe. But this carefully designed study found that when rats were offered intravenous cocaine or sugar (in the form of artificially sweetened water), they always went for the sugar. Even previously cocaine-addicted rats switched to the sweetened water. When higher and higher doses of cocaine were injected intravenously, just below the amount that would give them seizures, they still went for the sweetened water.
Think about it. The rats preferred the equivalent of a Diet Coke to being shot up with intravenous cocaine. Sugary sweetness (in this case created by artificial sweeteners) has a stronger draw than even heroin, which is much more addictive than cocaine. Other studies comparing table sugar and cocaine found the same results, including one done at Connecticut College that showed that rats who were fed Oreo cookies had significantly greater activity in the pleasure center of their brains than those who were injected with cocaine or morphine. And yes, this is an animal study, and rats and humans are different, but the same types of results have been found in human studies.
As I just explained, we are hardwired to seek pleasure and reward. It is a survival mechanism. Anytime we have access to hyperpalatable sweet or fatty foods, we are programmed to eat a lot of them and to store those excess calories as belly fat to sustain us through scarce times that may lie ahead. That’s what your body is supposed to do; the problem is that the scarcity we’re storing up for never comes. The diabesity epidemic is really just a normal biological response to the inputs from our abnormal environment. What saved us as hunter-gatherers is killing us now.
You’re probably wondering why we don’t have a built-in control mechanism to tell the brain we have had enough food. We do. Your body’s natural brake on hunger is a hormone produced by your fat cells called
leptin
. Unfortunately, in many of us, that natural brake line has been tampered with.
Two bad things happen when your biology is damaged by sugar and processed foods. First, your body becomes
insulin resistant,
so you have to pump out more and more insulin in an attempt to keep your blood sugar normal. Insulin is a powerful fat-storage hormone, one that encourages your body to pack on dangerous belly fat.
Second, you become
leptin resistant
. That means that no matter how much of this fabulous appetite-suppressing hormone your body makes, your brain cannot read the signals. It is “resistant,” or numb, to the signals from leptin. But wait… it gets worse.
High levels of insulin produced through all the sugar and fructose consumption (from high-fructose corn syrup and other sugars) block the leptin signals in your brain, so your body thinks it is starving even after a Big Mac, fries, and a large soda. Ever wonder how you can still be hungry right after a big meal? It is the insulin surge and the leptin resistance. This is how sugar and junk food hijack your brain chemistry and your metabolism.
Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end there. The fructose (mostly from high-fructose corn syrup) gets directly absorbed from your gut and goes to the liver without passing through the normal controls that glucose has to deal with. Insulin is required to get glucose into the cells, but fructose gets mainlined directly into the liver. This switches on
lipogenesis
, the mechanism that turns sugar directly into fat. Think fatty liver. Think foie gras—not in a goose, but in
you
.
A fatty liver is an inflamed liver. This, in turn, causes even more insulin resistance. Your cells become numb to the effects of insulin, but your body desperately wants to get the sugar into your cells. The body then pumps out more insulin, creating more belly fat and inflammation. This is the cause of most heart attacks and strokes, many cancers, and even dementia. In fact,
insulin resistance is the very cause of aging itself
.