Could We be Addicted to Food?

We’re told obesity is reaching epidemic proportions, with diabetes not far behind. But is the moral panic that demonises individuals who become obese justified, or could something else be going on?

Some years ago there was a rumour circulating about a well known brand of cat food. It was said that most owners claimed their cats preferred this brand because the manufacturers had included an additive that cats got addicted to. I have no idea if this is true, of course, and the rumour was more of a joke than an accusation, but still, it makes you think. Hold this thought. You’ll see the relevance of it shortly.

Over the past twelve months or so I’ve been suffering from depression. One of the effects of this has been that I’ve lost my appetite for food. I just don’t seem to get hungry very often. My usual routine now is to eat one meal a day in the evening. When I say “meal” I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. Monday to Saturdays this normally consists of a bowl of homemade soup and a cheese or ham salad sandwich. On Sundays I tend to cook a roast and we have that with two or three vegetables and mashed potatoes. Occasionally I eat a piece of cake or a few chunks of chocolate as well as this. The point I’m making is that my food intake over a long period of time has reduced dramatically. My weight hasn’t. I’m still around the same weight, give or take a couple of pounds, as I was before I became depressed and lost my zest for eating. I’m not particularly overweight for my size but I’m certainly not skinny. I have bulges, and not all in the so-called “right” places! I don’t get much exercise, either, these days. I have arthritis which makes even walking very far quite painful which is also why I’m not into working out in a gym. In short, I lead a sedentary lifestyle, just like millions of other people who inhabit a world full of labour saving devices. However, before my depression, when I ate more I was also much more active. I would swim about four times a week and used up a lot more energy because I was working back then as well.

What does all this mean? Could it be that I’m not losing weight because the small amount of food I now eat is just enough for my energy needs? Could it be that the age old idea that human beings need three square meals a day is a myth? Sure, if you do a really hard physical job you’re going to need the calories, but if the engine’s always in tick over mode, you’re obviously going to need much less fuel. This, of course, isn’t rocket science and has been the basis of dieting theories forever.

So why would people who use very little energy get hungry enough to overeat? You’d think if their bodies were giving them the right feedback that they’d only eat enough for their needs, surely, unless something was interfering with this mechanism perhaps.

Let’s put these people (i.e. you and me) into context. What kind of societies do we live in? What’s the major driving force behind what we do in those societies? It seems to me that more and more that driving force is the business of turning a profit at any cost. If you’re in the business of producing and selling food to people whose lifestyles only demand a small amount of this commodity to keep them healthy, you’re not going to turn a profit unless you can convince them to buy more than they need. How are you going to do this, especially when competition is fierce?

The food industry in western societies is hugely powerful and, in my view, totally unscrupulous. We may have advertising standards, we may push for honest product information on food labels, and we can bring in legislation to prevent them putting their sugar laden drinks on sale in schools…whatever. It doesn’t stop them selling us stuff that makes us fat and diabetic, they just re-launch it somehow and advertise it as “healthy” by lying to us or failing to mention that whilst it might contain only 3% fat its loaded with glucose syrup and the fat it contains is the deadly transfat anyway.

What is it about sugar and fat? Why, after so much has been said by health experts about the dangers of too much of these substances, does the food industry persist in putting them in our food? Why not just make and sell stuff without it? Are they afraid we wouldn’t like what they make without these things in there? Have they got us all addicted to them? Think what it would do to their profits if we all went cold turkey and started eating unadulterated food. Perhaps they’ve become addicted to their profits.

It seems clear that there’s a lot more to the obesity problem than meets the eye. It certainly seems unfair to me to blame it all on some lack of an individual’s moral fibre in failing to curb their unforgivable greed. All this does is to divert attention from the real problem – the brute fact that we live in a world where making money matters more than human life. Well, we don’t have to. We can change things.

Maybe for starters we should be suing food manufacturers, instead of tobacco companies. Hit them where it hurts.