Is the Food Industry Conspiring to Make You Fat?
by Kelly McPherson CPT, CFT, CES
In short. No.
The food industry does not care whether you are fat or thin. They only care that you buy their products repeatedly. That is how they pay their mortgages. We all need to do that, right? To that end, they have spent millions of dollars doing research on what sells and what makes foods irresistible enough to drive us to buy more and more. They have learned enough to do this very effectively.
I take my information from a book that I recently read titled The End of Overeating by David A Kessler, MD. I would highly recommend that everyone read this book. I have to warn you, however, that a major portion of the book focuses on irresistible foods and it made me hungry. Dr Kessler writes a lot about why that is as well, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. Just make sure you don’t have any cookies or Cheetos in reach while you read.
According to Kessler, the food industry has discovered that the right combinations of fat, sugar and salt act in our brain much in the same way as cocaine does. When we anticipate a reward, in this case food, a chemical in our brain called dopamine floods the brain and causes us to work harder to get that reward. After we have received the reward or the food satiates us, the dopamine recedes and we quit working to get the reward. Like cocaine, when sugar, fat or salt are consumed in the right quantities, the dopamine does not recede and we continue to feel the need to work to get the reward whether or not we are full. We continue to eat until the food is gone or until we are very uncomfortable. Minutes later we may be driven to eat yet more. Yikes!!!
So, just be aware of what you are eating and stop eating the fat, sugar and salt, right? It’s just not as easy as that. After once receiving a positive reward for having eaten a food, the beginnings of a habit are formed in our brains. We will want more. If we give in to that reward often enough, the neural patterns in our brain change and an addiction emerges. We will seek out that reward even if we got food poisoning from it last time. It is that compelling.
Also, the food industry has gotten very sneaky at disguising the fat, sugar and salt in our foods. When eating out at restaurants, we don’t even know what is in our food. If there is nutritional information, it is usually limited to calories, carbs, fat and protein. That is not nearly enough information to know what we are eating. Was this chicken fresh when it got to the restaurant or was it battered in fat, sugar and salt and then par fried in a factory only to be fried and slathered again in the restaurant? Was it injected with water and chemicals to make it tender and more flavorful? What exactly am I eating?
On the packaged foods that we have in our cupboards, the labels are deceiving. I have always considered myself to be fairly adept at reading these. I was wrong. The food industry is very sneaky at disguising the contents of food. Most health conscious shoppers won’t buy cereal that has sugar as the first item in the ingredient list. I know that I am that way and I distinctly remember my mother being that way. So, the food industry simply calls it by different names. For example, following is the first few ingredients from the box of cereal in my cupboard.
Ingredients: Corn meal, whole grain wheat(sounds good doesn’t it), sugar(#1), molasses(#2), partially hydrogenated soybean oil, fructose(#3), modified corn starch, brown sugar(#4), syrup(#5), honey(#6)
Yikes! That’s a lot of hidden sugar! Six different kinds!!! According to the label, 30g is one serving. Of those grams, 10 of them are sugar. That cereal is 33% sugar!!! Holy Cow! Ok kids, would you like some milk today with your sugar?
So, now what can we do? After reading this book, there are a couple of things that I know that I am going to change in my household. Here’s what I am going to do.
1. Eat at home more. The art of cooking at home is a dying art. More and more I am running into people whose idea of cooking is finding a bag of frozen dinner and dumping it in the oven. As convenient as these things are, they are loaded with hidden fats, sugars and salts. Let’s all slow down and cook our own meals. It will save our budgets as well as our waistlines.
2. Look at my addictions as addictions. In some ways this is taking the responsibility of a weight problem off of my shoulders and putting it on the excuse of an addiction. That is not what I am trying to do. Just like an alcoholic, I need to admit to having a problem and take the necessary steps to overcome it. This means looking at it differently from just a lack of willpower, but more as an actual chemical and emotional dependence. There are many books and successful processes that have been developed to overcome addictions. These should be really helpful in this area.
3. Know what is in my food. This goes along well with eating at home and cooking more. If I am the one putting it in, then I know what it is. But also, my label reading is going to get better. I will not allow the food industry to trick me anymore.
4. Don’t be fooled by health claims. The healthiest foods have no labels on them at all. The ones that have all the low-fat, low-cholesterol, etc labels are generally foods that have been engineered to be that way through chemicals. I want REAL food, not a composite of chemicals.
5. Vote with my dollar. Our food industry is driven by commercialism. The driving factor is whether or not a company can make more money. There is nothing wrong with that. We all need to earn a living. It leaves the responsibility to us, as consumers, to tell them what we want by voting with our dollars. If the garbage won’t sell, we won’t see it on store shelves. I give my dollar the most power that it can by voting for my own health. I will vote for REAL food. I will vote for farmers markets. I will vote for food from my own kitchen. I will vote for foods in the grocery store that have ingredient lists that I understand.
I don’t write this to scare anyone or to stress anyone out about our food. I write this to help us be aware. Knowledge is power. In this case, knowledge is power to overcome. There are still many, many foods out there that are wonderful to eat. They are whole and unadulterated and full of goodness and flavor. I would encourage us all to seek them out, cook them, and thoroughly enjoy them with our families. Food is a wonderful celebratory aspect of our lives. Let’s fight to keep it that way.