Are you a food addict?

By JAMES GITAU

Let’s start with a simple test:

1. Are you one of those people who are unable to go past the pastry shop without stopping to buy a loaf or piece of cake, even when you are not hungry?

2.            When a bowl of potato crisps is placed on the table, are you unable to stop reaching for it until it is empty?

3.            Do you continue eating your favourite food (mine used to be chapos), even though you know you are over-doing it?

4.            Do you eat certain foods even when you are not hungry?

5.            Do you experience withdrawal symptoms such as agitation, anxiety and even headaches when you cut out certain foods?

If the answer to any of these questions is ‘yes’, you are a food slave. I know you might find this hard to be believe, but you are not alone. Most people are food addicts. Even worse, they addicted to harmful food.

In my last two articles, I shared quite a bit on how we seem to eat more as our income increases. The variety of junk foods on the supermarkets shelves has rapidly increased as people’s desire for unhealthy food rises.

Sadly, the food we work hard to be able to afford so that we can ‘enjoy’ life may eventually take away the very happiness we search for. In many cases, it has cost people their health, relationships and careers, and even led to financial ruin.

It cost both my parents their lives and I, too, was on the fast lane, following in their footsteps. If it were not for my awakening, which I consider as true divine intervention, I would probably have suffered worse health challenges than the diabetes and high blood pressure that took both parents away before their time.

As my financial situation improved, one of the areas I thought would give me happiness was food. I enjoyed highly processed foods and filled the kitchen pantry with unhealthy foods.  Nyama choma, junk food and alcohol were the in thing for me.

My drink was among the top items on my list of important things in life. I even built a full bar in my house. I would ask my friends in the armed forces to help me buy the liquor in boxes from their stores, as it was cheaper.

I was a food addict, and the worst part of it is that I was also training my children to become food junkies.

So how do you become a member?

First, we need understand how we are wired. We are hard wired, at the very primitive level of our brain, for certain needs; oxygen, food, sex and sleep. These are essential to our survival as a species.

At the food level, glucose is very important. When we eat food, it is converted into glucose, which is then used to provide us with energy. Whenever we are hungry, our cells start craving glucose.

Over time, the big food companies have figured out how to manipulate your body’s basic need for glucose, to create massive wealth for themselves.  By sweetening their products with huge amounts of sugar and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), they give your body a sudden rush of glucose; you experience a temporary high, and then a crash. You then desire more.

A major study published recently in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows that high sugar, high glycaemic foods are addictive in the same way as cocaine and heroin.

Dr David Ludwig and his colleagues at Harvard University demonstrated that foods that raise blood sugar quickly or have a high glycaemic index, such as wheat products, trigger a special region in the brain called the nucleus accumbens. This is the pleasure centre of the brain, and once activated, it makes us feel good and drives us to seek more of the same feeling.

When the pleasure centre is activated, it lights up. When one eats food or drinks loaded with sugar, this area lights up more than when one takes cocaine or heroin. Foods that spike blood sugar are addictive. That is the reason why you are unable to stop reaching for junk food, even when you know it is harmful to your health. Your brain’s pleasure centre is lighting up and driving you to seek more and more of what is giving you the ‘high’.

The food industry spends billions of dollars figuring out how to trigger your ‘bliss point’ so that you make them wealthier. The main goal of their well-paid food scientists is to create a taste that will drive your pleasure centre into a frenzy, so that no matter how much you eat, you feel it can never be enough.

Next week, we talk about the effects of the sugar loaded foods.