If you feel that you are addicted to food, it may not be
your fault as it becomes more and more apparent that the food industry has
figured out ways to train your brain to want the same foods again and again. This
may seem like an outrageous accusation but the bottom line is that those in the
food industry only have one priority and that is to keep you coming back to buy
the same foods again and again. Junk
food does weaken your resolve, change your behavior and have you eating the
fat, salt and sugar that makes you obese.
The Addictive Salt, Sugar and Fat Combo
The three magic ingredients that are basic to addictive food
science are sugar, fat and salt. The food industry has become very crafty when
it comes creating foods that train your brain to want those foods that are
engineered to contain exactly the perfect amounts of these ingredients. Many junk foods are created by teams of
chemists, physicists who develop them to have a certain type of effect on the
brain. You feel high after you eat them and then you want more. The food
industry knows this and creates foods that meet a certain nutritional profile
so that you will become mentally and physically dependent on eating them to
feel well and like you are in a good mood.
Furthermore, foods are being developed that appeal to our
very human need to have food with a crunchy or crispy texture or a texture with
“mouth feel”, meaning that it melts in the mouth like chocolate or fat. The problem with this is that many of the foods
engineered to taste like this, that don’t actually contain fat or chocolate,
contain harmful additives and ingredients.
The Australian Junk Food Study
This supposition is not radical conjecture. There was a very
important study done by the School of Medical Sciences, UNSW Australia that
proved how junk food changes behavior and leads to obesity and overeating. The study was published in the journal Frontiers of Psychology.[1]
Basically this study concluded that feeding rats junk food
made them obese and made them want the same foods over and over again. The
researchers, led by Professor Margaret Morris taught young rats to associate
two different flavours of sugar water, cherry and grape, with two different
sound cues. The male rats were part of
two groups. One group was fed a healthy diet and the other was fed a junk food
diet for two weeks. The rats were then
left to enjoy their sugary treat and studied by the researchers.
The rats that were fed junk food always ate again when they
heard their sound cue. The rats on a healthy diet ignored the cues to eat more
if they were full. This indicated to the scientists that animals are naturally hardwired
to eat a balanced diet.
The rats that ate a diet of junk food that included cookies,
cakes pies and dumplings increased their weight by ten percent in just two
weeks. They also preferred to eat the
foods that were bad for them and lost all interest in eating novel foods.
Even more revealing was the revelation that when the rats
that were fed junk food and put on a normal diet for two more weeks that the
rats still continued to indulge their old behaviors leading the researchers to
conclude that the junk food actually had the ability to alter the orbitofrontal
cortex area of the brain. This part of the brain is the one that rules
gratification.
When you embark on a Healthy & Active Program you effectively changes your metabolism so that your brain and body can dump its addiction and be trained to eat in a healthy manner again.
For more
information about the Healthy & Active Program please visit our website at www.healthy-active.com. You may also
call us in Toronto at (41) 440-2217 and ask for Adrienne Wright Bulow or Dr.
Michael Rahman or email us at adrienne@healthy-active.com.
[1] To
read more about this fascinating study see the article Junk food makes rats
lose appetite for balance diet at http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-08/f-jfm082514.php.
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