The Food Industry's Conspiracy to Keep You Hooked

Over the last few years a great deal of information has been uncovered about how the tobacco companies knowingly engineered their cigarettes to become more addictive, usually by adding chemicals to cigarettes that increase the addictiveness of nicotine and keep smokers hooked.

What if the food industry was doing the same thing?

According to David Kessler, MD, that's exactly what food manufacturers have been doing for years, and that's at least partially responsible for the epidemic of overeating and obesity we're now witnessing.

Kessler, the former Commissioner of the FDA, has written a terrific and compelling book called "The End of Overeating". The book makes several arguments:

1. Food has been "engineered" to contain various combinations of fat and sugar and salt that have never before been found in the human diet
   
2. These combinations- particularly of fat and sugar together- are designed to stimulate brain chemistry in a way that makes it virtually impossible to resist these foods (Remember "betcha can't eat just one?")
   
3. These foods "amp up" the neurons in the brain, getting them to fire more. "The message to eat becomes stronger, motivating the eater to act more vigorously in pursuit of the stimulus", he writes
   
4. The most important goal of food "design" is not nutrition but to create a feeling of anticipation and desire by activating the pleasure centers of the brain
   
5. Once the pleasure centers of the brain have been "hijacked" by these foods, our desire for them no longer has anything to do with hunger and more resembles addictive behavior than anything else

Now there's a lot more to the book than that, and I strongly recommend that you read it. But a few points that Kessler makes are worth mentioning here.

Kessler thinks that to overcome the addictions to certain "trigger" foods, it may be best to eliminate them completely – at least for a while. This is exactly what we do on the first two weeks of Diet Boot Camp and here's why: When you're addicted to something (cigarettes, alcohol, sugar, grains)- the idea of "everything in moderation" is useless. An alcoholic can't drink in moderation, a person with an allergy to peanuts can't eat peanuts in moderation, and those of us who are addicted to lethal combinations of sugar and fat might have to treat the foods that contain those combinations in the same way- abstinence!

Kessler also believes, however, that it's very difficult to stay on an eating plan that completely eliminates foods you're in love with. He suggests that you (very carefully) begin to add back certain foods you really love, but with a renewed consciousness about their dangers and a different attitude about portions. (This is what we do after the first two weeks in Diet Boot Camp.)

I think "The End of Overeating" is an important contribution to the literature about appetite, brain chemistry and obesity. After reading it, I find myself thinking a lot more about what I'm eating, why I'm eating it and how much of it I'm consuming. All of a sudden cravings aren't seen as just compulsions to be obeyed, but as the result of a carefully engineered plan on the part of food manufacturers to keep me "hooked".

Read this book and you're unlikely to ever look at a chocolate chip cookie in quite the same way as you did before reading it.

Treating Cravings and Addictions with Food and Supplements

You may never have been addicted to drugs, but you might know something about the addiction to food. Or sugar. Or alcohol. Or gambling. Turns out that all these addictions- and the associated cravings- have more in common with one another than you might think. And interestingly enough, the key to managing them might be in your diet.

This week's issue of The Economist, a London based newspaper, reports on interesting ongoing research using dietary approaches to addictions.

Here's how they explain the problem:

"People are programmed for addiction. Their brains are designed so that actions vital for propagating their genes- such as eating and having sex- are highly rewarding. Those reward pathways can, however be subverted by external chemicals (in other words, drugs) and by certain sorts of behavior such as gambling."

We also know from animal experiments that reward pathways in the brain can be hijacked by sugar. Rats who became addicted to sugar actually showed all the signs of cocaine withdrawal when sugar was removed from their diet.

The key to the whole thing- no big surprise- is in your brain chemistry, that complicated computer system where messages can frequently get corrupted and things can easily go astray. Addictive substances literally "hijack" the pleasure centers of the brain so that it's harder to obtain regular plain old garden-variety pleasure from regular activities. Instead, you need bigger and bigger doses of the substances or behaviors that give you the biggest jolt- sugar, cocaine, drugs, alcohol, gambling and the rest of the usual suspects.

One supplement that's getting a lot of research attention for addictions and that has remained under the radar for now is NAC- N-Acetyl-Cysteine. A study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry found that giving NAC to cocaine addicts reduced their desire to use the drug so much that the researchers recommended NAC as a potential treatment. An entirely different study found that NAC reduced the desire to gamble in 80% of gambling addicts (as compared to 28% of those given a placebo). And animal studies have shown that NAC reduces relapse with cocaine and heroin.

OK, so probably not many of you are cocaine or heroin addicts. But cravings are cravings, and if NAC works with some addictions (or cravings) it should work with others. I've recommended NAC for years as part of a liver health program since it boosts the body's level of the important antioxidant glutathione (which is not well absorbed in supplement form).

Now it looks like it may have another use!

Other nutritional factors that can support a healthy brain function are tyrosine (a precursor of the neurotransmitter dopamine), 5-HTP (a precursor of serotonin) and GABA (a relaxing neurotransmitter). My friend Dr. Daniel Amen put these together in an elegantly designed formula called NeuroLink, which also contains a nice dose of vitamin B6, needed to convert 5-HTP into the feel good neurotransmitter serotonin.