Have you ever wondered why you just can’t get enough of certain foods? Why you can eat a whole bag of chips or an entire package of cookies and barely remember doing it? Why the sound, smell or image of a food from your childhood still makes your mouth water as an adult? Why you consider some foods “comfort” and not others?
Because the food industry wants it that way.
In the latest episode of Brain Over Belly, we reconnect with Colin, our second of two special people who are eager to lose weight and keep it off for life, with the help of Dr. Brown and Idaho BMI.
Colin is still pre-bariatric surgery, working hard at changing what he eats, when he eats, and how he eats. He’s joined by Dr. Brown who explains how modern food engineering – the right combination of sugar, salt, and fat in processed foods – affects our brains and makes it virtually impossible for someone like Colin to stop eating certain foods, even if he wants to.
Processed foods are hijacking our brains before they hit our bellies.
The texture, flavor, taste, smell, sound and temperature of processed foods are all carefully engineered to affect the six centers of our brain, influencing our emotions, memories, perceptions of hunger, reaction to stress and fear, and more. As a result, we become detached from our ability to govern ourselves when it comes to food.
Marketing is also being used to sensitize people to visual cues that trigger cravings for certain products. It becomes an automated reflex (like the hammer on the knee), and it starts in INFANCY. Unsuspecting parents, with the help of the food industry, are teaching our youth what food should taste like and setting them up for a world of health problems as they get older. It’s why obesity rates are as high as they are.
The food companies are flying under the radar.
Did you know that two out of the three top food companies were purchased by Big Tobacco? And now they are using all the same tricks and tactics to keep us purchasing their food that were so successful with cigarettes.
They fall back on calories and hide behind the idea that people have a choice when it comes to consuming food. That we can read labels and should know better when it comes to eating in appropriate amounts or only eating so many. They blame the person for not having more self control, while the super smart teams of food engineers fall under the radar.
It’s not your fault in the way you think it is.
Dr. Brown explains that the processed foods that overweight people are eating (and are constantly encouraged to eat) has changed their neurology to the point that they just can’t stop. Their bodies are on cruise control.
As he has said before, EAT LESS, MOVE MORE JUST DOESN’T WORK. It’s like telling someone with a seizure disorder to just stop having seizures. The message we are sending to overweight people – just starve, be miserable, it’s all your fault – has to stop.
So what should you do?
To start, follow Colin’s lead and STOP EATING PROCESSED FOODS. Maybe not all at once. Colin is the first to admit that for him, going all in 100% from the beginning is a sure way to fail. But start practicing the principles that Dr. Brown outlines in the Brain Over Belly podcast, and don’t be hard on yourself when you give into that occasional guilty pleasure. We all have them. Even Dr. Brown.
The Brain Over Belly podcast is available everywhere you listen to podcasts. Subscribe at Listen Boise now.
What have you got to lose?
