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Fatty Foods May Cause Cocaine-Like Addiction
WrongSizeGlass writes "A new study in rats suggests that high-fat, high-calorie foods affect the brain in much the same way as cocaine and heroin. The rats that gorged themselves on the human food quickly became obese."
...I have just as much respect for fat people as I do for drug addicts.
Funny, I lost 40 lbs eating high-fat low-carb food, purposely not exercising, and eating whenever I was hungry. And my blood pressure went down to normal from its high of 145/95, so I could stop taking blood pressure medication as well. I'm healthier than I've ever been.
Of course, unlike these rats, I did not eat cheesecake, frosting or other foods high in refined carbs. But this POS study doesn't bother to differentiate between high-fat/high-carb, high-fat/low-carb, etc, let alone about the balance or type of fatty acids present in the food (e.g. grass-fed bacon vs. grain-fed). This is not science, not even close.
High fats aren't the problem - high carbs are, especially the kinds in corn syrup and sugar (starches are a little less bad, but still bad overall).
Note that you need some, but not as much as you get in some of these foods.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
No, the price of sugar is kept high due to trade restrictions for the US sugar lobby.
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
I've been doing this weird thing lately.... "cooking". From base ingredients. I don't mean some kinda "all natural" kick, but most of my meals are cooked using basics. Flour. Sugar. Water. Various cooking oils. Beef/Chicken/Vegetable stock. Spices. Rice. Pasta in reasonable amount. Vegetables - fresh or fresh frozen -- which should take up a larger portion of your meal than they probably do. I also started exercising* a few times a week, and eating reasonable proportions -- and as a result of those changes have lost forty pounds and counting. I still eat the crappy stuff with too much HFCS and excessive fat (I've a mental addiction to cheeze-its and butterfingers) but in moderation.
THe problem here isn't HFCS. It's not fatty foods. If anything, part of the problem lies in looking for external factors to blame. It's eating too much food, too regularly, and most of us not getting any significant exercise*. In my case, for a long time it was lack of knowledge of when is "enough" to eat .(Hint - if you feel full when you're done eating, you've eaten far too much.) Once you have that knowledge, it's also lack of willingness to exercise self control.
The point of this mini-rant: look to yourself when trying to find a reason. For the vast majority of people, it starts and ends there. If you think it's HFCS -- ok, fine. But HFCS in quantity is far easier to avoid than you make it sound. Hell, fresh bread takes 30 minutes of actual time once a week, without even using a bread machine. Most other alternatives are as easy; or come with a slight increase of time in exchange for healthier food that tastes as good or better.
* By "exercise" I'm not talking about anything drastic. I started walking my dogs for 30 minutes at a brisk walk, 4-5 times a week. I also started using stairs instead of elevators for up to three flights at work and not just one flight. More recently I've started running, but that's after I lost most of the weight and I do it because (amazingly) I find that it feels good.
Unfortunately we're hardwired evolutionarily to crave these things in order to cope with lean times, and to top it off these foods are typically cheaper and have less prep time involved.
Until science offers a completely predictive model of behavior and thoughts, it would be premature to assume that a soul (in the classical definition) does or doesn't exist. Just as there are "God in the gaps" belief patterns, there can also be "science in the gaps" belief patterns.
That argument is silly.: you would have no objection to the food companies could put lead in their food as a sweetener or any other toxin that happened to enhance the taste because you view it as the person's responsibility to know what is in their food. You think I'm going to carry a wet chemical lab around with me to test food every time I'm hungry? The bottom line is that part of the reason why we have a government is to precisely to prevent people from passing poisonous or other misleading substances off as nutritious food. If you don't like it, move to some third world country where that sort of thing is acceptable.
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Buy your girlfriend some nice chocolates. You might be surprised.
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