Our favourite foods are making us fat, yet we can't resist, because eating them is changing our minds as well as bodies
"Higher sugar, fat and salt make you want to eat more." I had read this in scientific literature, and heard it in conversations with neuroscientists and psychologists. But here was a leading food designer, a Henry Ford of mass-produced food, revealing how his industry operates. To protect his business, he did not want to be identified, but he was remarkably candid, explaining how the food industry creates dishes to hit what he called the "three points of the compass"......
.....This kind of food disappears down our throats so quickly after the first bite that it readily overrides the body's signals that should tell us, "I'm full." The food designer offered coleslaw as an example. When its ingredients are chopped roughly, it requires time and energy to chew. But when cabbage and carrots are softened in a high-fat dressing, coleslaw ceases to be "something with a lot of innate ability to satisfy".
-------------------
A must read, guaranteed.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Add to that, skipping breakfast and sitting hunched over a computer all day.
ReplyDeleteAnd no time to cook, and a physical and emotional disconnect from our food sources. The latter is especially egregious in the U.S. where processed, factory-made food is the norm and many people have no idea what a I eat much better in the summertime when I chow down on my own vegetables from my own garden, and if it were feasible I'd have masses of fruit trees and my own chickens too, and goats (just as pets and for milk, not to eat O:-) ). I'm a vegetarian and very conscious of what I eat, yet even I succumb too frequently to the lure of high-fat high-sugar food and to the weight troubles that ensue.
ReplyDeleteYou also have to take the cost of food into account. Crappy overprocessed junk food is much cheaper than healthy food, it's hard to keep fruits and veggies fresh if you can't go to the market daily as many Europeans and Middle Easterners can, etc etc. You can moralize all you want about bad food choices, but struggling American families are just trying to get the most caloric bang for their buck.
Oops -- my first paragraph I left out, "have no idea what a 'real' food product looks like."
ReplyDeleteAnd that' s me posting as "Guest." ARGHHH!
ReplyDelete