Junk Food Love – Fair Oaks Holistic Health

One of the basic tenants of diagnosis in Chinese Medicine is to pay attention to any strong likes or dislikes the patient has – especially to foods. Strong likes or dislikes are red flags highlighting imbalances within the patient. Chinese doctors wisely understood that health is all about balance. Any strong attachment to anything produces an imbalance within our nervous system. A balanced system delights in and enjoys foods, but does not crave or become overly stimulated by particular foods.

A little discussed fact of biology is the evolutionary purpose for the brain circuits for being “in love”. These circuits stimulate the part of the brain that cocaine affects. They are motivational circuits that are designed to get us to take risks. These pathways are designed to be in service to the larger needs of the species and opposed to our needs as individuals. Nature knows that the survival of the species is more important than our individual survival so it equipped us with crazy making brain parts that push us to disregard our own safety in order to make babies.

Romeo and Juliet are a perfect example of that “in love” drive at work. When we think about the play we tend to only look at how romantic the drive to reproduce is and ignore how everybody in the play dies in the end. Mother Nature is harsh and does not care if you die in the attempt to make babies. Not taking the risk means the end of the human species.

So what does that have to do with food? We have learned to stimulate those same pleasure motivation centers of our brains with food. This is done through chemicals called excitotoxins (MSG and the chemicals formed during browning of breads and meats are examples), and through excess consumption. And just like chasing after a mate, they cause us to ignore risk. We ignore the fact that 99% of the foods we really really love are killing us. Every bite is like a little paper cut. Eventually we will bleed to death. But we don’t care because we are “in love”. We are Romeo and we want our high sugar, deep fried, chemically enhanced, fast food Juliet. We have little control over it. Powerful food drugs are manipulating our brains.

Well, being Romeo is not such a good idea. Hopefully, when we have suffered enough, maybe then we will look past the rose colored glasses and see what we have actually been eating. I have tried for years to use moderation in consuming these food “drugs”. Unfortunately the chemical control they exert over my brain overwhelms my self-control most of the time. This should not surprise me as we are dealing with the same drug brain pathways that any street drug uses. Addiction is addiction – it is ugly any way you look at it. The price of addiction is loosing your health.

I didn’t recognize my addiction until I found out I was gluten intolerant and dairy intolerant on a genetic level. I always said I wasn’t addicted because I could eliminate any food I thought might be a problem without a great deal of trouble. I didn’t realize how thoroughly our food supply is saturated with these food drugs. They are in everything! Even pure organic foods are filled with them because they are natural consequences of how we prepare our foods, grow our foods, ship our foods…heck many of them are our natural foods. I had to engage massive lifestyle changes to adapt to no gluten or dairy, and along the way I found I eliminated most of the offenders in my diet.

I am afraid that abstinence is the only answer I have at this point in time. These “drugs” are just too powerful. My answer is to find healthy replacements that I can enjoy just as much. That is what I am doing in creating recipes each month.

Enjoy and delight in your food, but be very suspicious of any food you really really love. The part of your brain telling you how good it is does not care if you live or die. It is addicted to the feelings it gets from those foods. We are just addicted to love – junk food love.