Licking the Razor's Edge (2015)

Addiction #10 – Freedom from Gluttony
(a.k.a. FOOD)
“Mankind in general, since the advancement of cookery, eats twice as much as
nature requires.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
Many folks are overweight, especially in the United States, and yet most of these folks do
not realize that being overweight is most often not caused by laziness or genetic
predisposition … Most of them do not realize that it is food itself that is the challenge;
that new discoveries in neuroscience and biochemistry are finding that food affects brain
chemistry in ways that often lead to addiction; that the brain chemistry of people who are
overweight is very similar to that of a person addicted to drugs … that it is not their “lack
of discipline” or “bad luck” or “bad genes” that have led to those excess pounds, but that
the act of EATING itself IS ADDICTIVE.
In fact, even if you are not overweight, chances are you too are eating far too much food
for your own Good (or anyone else’s) … chances are that you too are addicted.
FACT #01 – THE HUMAN BODY IS PROGRAMMED TO OVER-EAT
Research has consistently shown that people are unable to resist temptations &
inducements to eat. When presented with delectable foods at times when we are not
hungry, we usually eat them. When served larger portions than we need to satisfy our
appetite, we usually clear our plate anyway. And commercial advertising that tries to
make us crave junk food usually succeeds. There is a long line of studies that show that
we are essentially puppets when it comes to eating, and that environmental food cues are
our puppeteers.
Wansink’s “self-refilling soup bowls” study is a great example. In this social experiment,
subjects were invited to enjoy a bowl of soup, eating as much or as little as they liked.
Half of the bowls were outfitted with a device that slowly and imperceptibly refilled them
with soup as the subjects ate. On average, the subjects eating from the self-refilling bowls
ate 73 PERCENT more soup than the others without realizing it and without feeling any
more full afterward.
In our distant past, food was scarce and it made sense to gorge on food whenever we
could find it. Today, we have outgrown this mental program … For most of us, food is
everywhere to be had, and yet even though we are in no danger of starving, we are still
obeying that age-old instinct that has us eating far too much whenever we have the
chance.
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