jacob wrote:
We already have science trying to figure out how to engineer food to be more addictive. We know how to trigger the desire to eat more. This is the exact problem. Science knows but the science is being misused to profit from an uninformed public. This is why this is a cultural ingenuity problem.
A guy just wrote a book on this titled, "The Dorito Effect." Here is brief interview with him:
http://www.mensjournal.com/health-fitne ... t-20150812
http://smile.amazon.com/Dorito-Effect-S ... tos+effect
Basically, he is suggesting we are tricking ourselves into eating things we wouldn't normally eat with the intense fake flavoring.
What changed? Did we suddenly lose willpower? We have to look at what controls our desire to eat — that's where flavor comes in. Flavors are an indicator of nutrients. When we take flavors and slice them off the nutrition that they signal — I call it nutritional decapitation — we create food that tells us a thrilling but deceptive lie. Bring it back to carbs: Who would overindulge in crackers and potato chips if they weren't flavored?
You eat all this food and get basically zero nutrition from it. You are still hungry after eating 800 calories of junk food because your body didn't get the fuel it needs to run properly. Handful after handful of junk food is telling you through flavor you are getting food, but your body isn't getting any nutrition so it asks for more "food." This doesn't happen with real food at nearly the same level. After you eat a delicious apple you don't really want another apple right then. This was demonstrated in a study on the CHORI-bar, which was designed as a cheap way to get nutrition to poor areas.
http://www.sciencenewsline.com/articles ... 70014.html
https://foundmyfitness.com/ (Podcast with Dr. Ames)
The only dietary change the researchers asked of the participants was to eat two CHORI-bars per day. Just by giving them a little better nutrition they managed to cause weight loss and improve some blood markers (obviously, the nutrition bars caused them to change certain bad eating habits). This suggests we would naturally self regulate, at least a little, if we had better nutrition.
@Ego
Absolutely. That's why I am for taxing the bejesus out of sweet drinks, junk food, candy, fast food, highly processed meats and alcohol (a conveniently forgotten source of sugar), and outlawing things like hydrogenated oils. Obesity costs us all. We should be recouping some of those costs.
I couldn't agree more. Plus, stop government subsidies of crops we should eat less of like corn, wheat, etc. As the Men's Journal article posted above mentioned, "We're cheapskates when it comes to food. We buy nice clothes, want a nicer house, but we think food should be as cheap as possible." This is actually one of the few issues I see in our community (not the nice clothes part
).