The Value of a Passion

Let’s recall what Dr. John Foreyt wrote to Dr. Pretlow:

To me, life events associated with stress, tension, anxiety, depression, loneliness, fear, anger, boredom need to be treated in ways such as you describe.

One thing that Dr. Pretlow has described is the positive kind of displacement activity. As he explains to children and teens,

There’s a mechanism in your brain called the displacement mechanism that’s causing you to overeat. It helps your brain deal with situations that you can’t easily face or are frustrating, yet, you can’t avoid… The good news is that you can control your displacement mechanism, and your overeating will stop.

In a paper called “The Displacement Mechanism as a Basis for Eating Disorders,” he says,

[I]t is possible for the individual to consciously rechannel the overflow mental energy to a non-destructive behavior. Examples are rechanneling to the breathing drive by slow, deep breaths, or rechanneling by wringing the hands.

This brain stress can be rechanneled through many conduits. In some settings, like a classroom, deep breaths and squeezing fists might be the only choices. But out in the world, the possibilities are endless. Go for a bike ride, fiddle with a fidget toy, jog, fling some kettlebells around, play a musical instrument, juggle, dance, do some kind of artwork, or just go for a walk.

Still, there is a difference between a pastime and a passion. One troubled individual might view filling up the page of a fancy coloring book as a tolerable distraction. For somebody else, there is only the compulsion of (capital A) Art. Passion is what really has the best chance of helping an addict to let go of an addiction, or never develop it in the first place. This is why a parent is wise to stop and think before deciding that a kid is “going overboard” with an interest.

Even an expensive toy like a drone might be worth considering, because flying one of those requires a lot of attention and concentration, making it just the sort of diversion the brain finds acceptable to keep it from a worse path.

Think carefully

Just pause to ponder the alternatives, in the “going overboard” department. Maybe you believe the preoccupation with video games is too much, and even worry that it is an addiction in itself. But maybe, all things considered, no matter how trivial and useless you think the achievement is, beating everybody at a favorite game still qualifies as a benevolent displacement that keeps the child away from something much less desirable, like weighing 300 pounds. It’s worth considering.

Dr. Pretlow has even seen a case where a young woman obtained enormous relief just by writing out elaborate Action Plans with which to attack the several displacement sources that confronted her.

She reported,

All the mindless urges and the snacking and stuff like that really just went away. I just wrote it down. My action plan for finances and stuff like that, and then they disappeared. No more eating urges. I mean, I’m definitely going to continue to write down my action plans.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Image by Pat Hartman

Extirpate the Roots of Addiction

Prevention is always better than cure. No argument there! The prevention of childhood obesity, for instance, is much preferable to letting obesity develop, and then trying to help a 300-pound person shed half their weight. One cause of obesity is the astonishing amount of gratuitous eating that people do. Now, it looks as if quite a lot of that is actually displacement activity, in reaction to life situations that seem inescapable by any acceptable path.

To step one increment further back, what if we could help kids avoid desperate life situations? Or, what if they could figure out how to handle those occasions more effectively? Or, what if we could make it easier for them to find something so interesting to do with their time and talents, that other matters would fade into obscurity?

The good kind of displacement

For purposes of this discussion, let’s just go ahead and call it a passion. If a person has a passion in life, chances are that preoccupation might use up enough of their mental energy to keep them out of at least some kinds of trouble. Also, this is a twofer. Finding a passion can both shield someone from becoming an addict in the first place, and help someone recover from their destructive relationship with eating.

A person can consciously rechannel their tumultuous overflow mental energy to a nondestructive behavior. As Dr. Pretlow and co-author Suzette Glasner have written,

[W]e sought to examine the application of displacement theory as a novel treatment for eating addiction and obesity.

If the rechanneled behavior becomes destructive, it is possible for the individual to consciously rechannel the overflow mental energy to a nondestructive behavior. Examples are rechanneling to breathing behavior (by taking slow, deep breaths), rechanneling to squeezing the hands, and rechanneling to hobbies.

“Hobbies” seems kind of dismissive and superficial. It could imply a lot of different types of activity, and a wide range of relationships to the activity. Watching sportsball on TV, while perhaps a legit hobby, will probably not pull somebody out of an addiction. But something might, if the person is really into it, and if it satisfies a lot of needs on different levels. A passion might help a person break up with their habit, or better yet, protect them from acquiring it in the first place.

Anyway, in this paper the authors go on to say,

If the displacement mechanism accounts for overeating, then targeting this mechanism in treatment should facilitate significant reductions in overeating without necessitating willpower to eat less.

As everybody knows by now, willpower doesn’t work. So the idea of having something that does work sounds pretty good.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Reconceptualization of eating addiction and obesity as displacement behavior and a possible treatment,” Springer.com, 06/22/22
Image by graibeard/CC BY-SA 2.0

Uproot the Seeds of Addiction

Nice picture, but it makes better sense and would be more accurate to say, “Remove the soil from which the seeds of addiction grow.” Sadly, it is difficult to illustrate something, for instance, soil, not being there.

What is the fertile ground that encourages addiction? As mentioned in the previous post, frustration can do the job efficiently. When a child has a particular talent, a natural bent for some activity, too often the parents and other authority figures are eager to thwart those impulses, and use tools like bribery or force to separate kids from their preferences. The result can be terribly sad.

A malleable young person can be persuaded or coerced to give up something they love, but there is a price to pay. Underneath the surface, trouble develops. Dr. Pretlow has compared that kind of situation to a dormant volcano. This quotation is from a previous Childhood Obesity News post that was republished by Obesity Prevention of America:

Often, a distressing life situation causes an overstock of energy to accumulate within a human being. In a very basic, instinctual way, the boiling energy wants to find expression in fighting, fleeing, or engaging in some other activity to “let off steam.” When a person’s preferred form of displacement behavior is overeating, the results can be dismal and long-lasting.

Sure, eating can reduce stress in the short term, but ultimately it creates situations that produce more stress — like being bullied, bursting out of one’s clothes, being nagged to start a fitness program, etc. Underneath, conditions are heating up and a gang of energy is looking for an excuse to erupt. All kinds of negative consequences might accrue. Like natural gas, it can blow the place up, or be tamed into keeping people warm and cooking their food. The “beauty part” is, under the right circumstances and with some help, that energy can be used for good, and repurposed into activities that have some redeeming value.

From an authority

John Foreyt is a Professor at the Baylor College of Medicine’s Department of Medicine and Department of Psychiatry. He’s also the Director of the DeBakey Health Center’s Behavioral Medicine Research Center, Department of Medicine. He’s published 17 books and more than 400 articles, and is regarded as an authority in the field of obesity. Dr. Foreyt wrote to Dr. Pretlow,

From a behavioral point of view, displacement as a major cause of overeating and the treatment you describe makes good sense. To me, life events associated with stress, tension, anxiety, depression, loneliness, fear, anger, boredom need to be treated in ways such as you describe. Maybe if they are caught and treated effectively in children there would be a lot less obesity in adults.

It is a worthy goal, to treat addiction to the point where the individual is in permanent recovery. No one suggests that stamp collecting can take the place of a 12-step program or inpatient rehab. On the other hand, having an interest in life is certainly a useful supplement to any other intervention. As Dr. Pretlow and co-author Suzette Glasner have written,

Rechanneling diverts the focus to a nondestructive medium.

People don’t need to let the restless energy take advantage of them and get them in more trouble. We don’t have to remain at the mercy of the slumbering volcano. We can take advantage of all that rogue energy, trap it and train it, as part of our addiction escape strategy.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “The Role of Cognitive Behavior Therapy-Based Treatment,” ObesityPreventionOfAmerica.org, 02/14/20,
Source: “Reconceptualization of eating addiction and obesity as displacement behavior and a possible treatment,” Springer.com, 06/22/22
Image by Sara J./CC BY-ND 2.0

Avoid Planting the Seeds of Addiction

The previous post left off by observing that an occupational passion, a creative obsession, or even a spiritual calling can, on the practical level, resemble an addiction when its requirements do not match up with what someone else believes is the most appropriate use of that person’s life. While growing up, some people need to try out different types of activities and experiment a bit to discover their interests. On the other hand, some know at the age of five what they “want to be when they grow up” and proceed, if allowed, in an unwavering course along that path.

This brings up another point. When a young person is absorbed in art or music, or even in rebuilding vintage cars, and the grownups actively discourage the enthusiasm, that negative dynamic provides a fertile ground for addiction to grow. It would be inaccurate to call this a thought process, but there is an emotional reasoning process (not the best kind) that goes something like this: “If I can’t do what I want, and what matters to me, how about if I just do nothing, and see how you like that?”

Next thing you know, the kid is hooked on downers and failing in every available direction. In other words, one of the best ways to cure addiction in a young person is to prevent it from ever happening, and one of the best ways to do that is to help and allow the kid to figure out what he is good at; what she enjoys doing; what he gets a thrill from accomplishing; what she is intellectually stimulated by.

Roots of addiction

Many people overdrink, overdrug, or overeat as a way of dealing with their other problems, and of course becoming an alcohol, drug or food addict is a fake cure that brings plenty of additional (and worse) problems into the person’s life. But is every use of the displacement mechanism a fake cure? Not if it saves the person from destruction, and helps them to avoid visiting various kinds of destruction on the people close to them.

Which is exactly what has happened to the people whose lives have been changed by flyfishing and by getting actively involved with all the peripheral details and underlying causes connected with that activity, like saving the world’s rivers from death by unrelenting pollution.

What if every kid who is hooked on cigarettes or beer or whatever, could find a positive and productive displacement activity? It might not directly solve their immediate problems, but could very well provide the first few steps of the grand stairway that leads them out of the life that contains those problems.

Dr. Pretlow wrote in “The displacement mechanism: a new explanation and treatment for obesity,”

Moving the opposing drives out of equilibrium, by resolving a person’s problems (displacement sources), theoretically should halt the displacement mechanism and might comprise an intervention for overeating/obesity, as well as other addictions. If the individual can either face or escape from the problematic situations, the displacement behavior of overeating should stop on its own without struggling and without willpower.

It is possible that the young person in the illustration on this page was destined by family tradition to be not a track star, but a teacher. And maybe that will happen someday. But meanwhile, we know for sure that we’re not looking at a person addicted to eating. Being allowed to discover a passion and follow it can undoubtedly help a young person to face problematic situations, by discovering strengths, and can even help her or him to escape from the problematic situations. This is something that parents might want to take under serious consideration.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Image by Steve Pisano/CC BY 2.0

Facets of Displacement

We have probably all heard criticisms of people who quit alcohol or other drugs, only to become “fitness freaks.” Now they channel their mental energies into physical manifestation with tough fitness regimens and customized diets and so forth. Sometimes, such people are disparaged by remarks like, “Big deal, he just traded in his alcohol addiction for a workout addiction.”

First of all, any person who never fought addiction might not have the credentials to voice an opinion about it. And second, is there really anything so wrong about swapping a harmful, destructive lifestyle for a productive, health-giving lifestyle, even if on the surface it looks like just a new addiction?

A thought experiment

A case could be made that anyone who devotes her or his life to serving humanity must be some species of an addict. Consider, for instance, a doctor who leaves a lucrative Hollywood-based reconstructive surgery practice and goes to some remote foreign location with no electricity, to repair the faces of babies born with cleft lips and palates.

That behavior could certainly be branded by concerned others as out of context, and even self-destructive. The successful specialist foregoes a huge chunk of income, and abandons kith and kin, to go far away and risk being caught in the middle of a war or catching some tropical disease. Wouldn’t any reasonable person categorize that as damaging behavior? Perhaps even as self-destructive as being a junkie!

Factually speaking, that doctor is losing money, leaving his spouse and children, and endangering himself. These are classic red flags of addiction. Would his mother-in-law be justified in organizing an intervention, and recruiting other relatives and friends to try and stop such unacceptable behavior?

Variety in facets

It seems like some human situations involve a lot of fuzzy edges, not to mention eliciting strong convictions that can seem like judgment in disguise. Dr. Pretlow has written that displacement mechanisms,

[…] if excessively expressed by the animal, from recurring untenable situations […] may go rogue and become destructive.

Which is exactly what some people believe has happened when a relative or friend decides to follow their heart. They’ve gone rogue and need to be set straight. Take creative individuals, for example. Many artists and musicians are looked at askance by other people in their lives. These fools give up potentially lucrative careers, and ruin their own chances to go on fancy vacations, wear designer clothes, have expensive cars, or even start a family — and for what? To paint pictures or fool around with a guitar.

Pursuing a passion can look an awful lot like an addiction, and can certainly have the same negative effects on a practical level. And sadly, quite a few people feel that creative aspirations ought to be squelched as firmly as alcoholism.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Image by Jonas Bengtsson

Displacement Mechanism Has Two Aspects

Every time somebody publishes a paper, it creates fertile ground for thoughts to sprout in other brains, whether those brains are academic, professional, journalistic, etc., or whether they belong to ordinary casual readers. And, as previously suggested, some might have a problem with defining displacement behavior as out of context.

The last post considered a hypothetical situation where a father, who happens to be an addict, quits his job even though his daughter needs corrective eye surgery. Onlookers would say, “How shockingly callous and irresponsible!” and they would be correct. Still, no matter how many labels might be attached to that neglectful parent’s decision, “out of context” probably should not be one of them.

The choice might be out of character, something the dad would never have done before he started messing around with the nose candy. It might cause horrendous negative consequences, along with massive regret. But if it happened at a certain time and location, and in a certain crucial situation, that’s the very definition of context.

They’re like zombies

It may be a non-optimal choice, a wildly destructive folly, and even a disastrous action. It might be one of several events that cause friends and family members to think, “I don’t even know this person anymore.” And yet the behavior is ultimately within context — the context of being an addict. Dr. Pretlow wrote “The displacement mechanism: a new explanation and treatment for obesity,” that it is…

[…] like a switch being pulled in the brain, or a tape playing, and the individual must go along with the tape until it’s done.

Exactly. And no matter how negative, the consequences also are in context, the context of the addict’s life. But enough of that. Let’s move on to the whole other side of displacement behavior — the reparative, healing side, the side illustrated by the post titled “The Profound Healing of Serenity” and its predecessors.

These describe how a large number of people have discovered a displacement behavior that fulfills enough of their needs and occupies enough of their consciousness that it enables them to abandon their substance addictions. In this case, the activity is fly fishing, and perhaps more important, the development of a worldview that includes the importance of helping other people escape their addictions, and even the necessity of saving rivers from ruination.

While animals and humans share many similarities, and much can be learned by observing animal behavior and then extrapolating that knowledge to humans, those comparisons stretch only so far. Humans have additional drives, like the need to make a difference, and the desire to enjoy the approval and esteem of others. Dr. Pretlow has written,

The displacement mechanism is thought to stem from opposing brain drives in equilibrium, such as fight or flight, that build up energy in the brain to commit to one or the other drives, which then overflows and is displaced to another drive, such as the grooming drive or the feeding drive.

And now we see that the energy can be displaced to even more diverse drives, perhaps even drives of a different order, and dare we say a higher order — such as the drive to leave the world in better condition than we found it, and the drive to be a good and positive influence on other humans, rather than a bad and negative one.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Image by a loves dc

More Displacement Questions

The most recent post raised a couple of issues about the displacement mechanism. It left off in the midst of pondering the idea that addictive behavior makes no sense to anyone, either the person who does it, or the others who are affected. Addictive behavior definitely seems crazy to people who may not, for instance, understand why you would go on a drinking binge, or an eating binge, just because your boss is mad. After all, for goodness’ sake, you’ve got bills to pay! Why would you risk losing your job by acting so volatile?

But it would be useful to look more carefully at the matter from the addict’s perspective. From that point of view, nothing is more important than acquiring the next fix. And it’s even worse when the addict has some remaining conscience because the situation might inspire her or him to engineer a situation that justifies going on a bender. The desperate addict retains just enough lucidity to realize that walking out for no good reason, in order to start the drinking weekend early, is not a good look. It would probably reap criticism from every direction.

But what if you, the addict, can manage to make just enough of a slip-up to earn a reprimand from the boss, and what’s worse — it’s public! Then you can quit on the spot, and go home and say, “You should have seen that manager! He was disrespecting me 99 different ways, and in front of the whole staff! What was I supposed to do, just stand there and take it?” And then go out and drink.

The home folks

Addicts are also very adept at stage-managing dramatic events between themselves and their significant others. How many times has a husband or a wife, quite consciously and deliberately, set up a situation to trigger a chain reaction that will ultimately let them escape to the bottle or whatever? A clever addict can even sell it as an act of kindness, telling the spouse, “Look. I don’t want to do something I’ll regret. You know I don’t want to hurt you or the kids, so I’m going out for a while to cool off.”

In “The displacement mechanism: a new explanation and treatment for obesity,” Dr. Pretlow gave an example of how…

[…] addictive behavior doesn’t make sense to the person involved nor to others around them. For example, why binge eat or get drunk when the boss yells at you? It is out-of-context behavior; the behavior doesn’t fit with the situation at hand.

It is difficult for some of us to imagine doing anything to upset the boss. And yet, multitudes of employed humans have experienced a “Take this job and shove it” moment, and acted on the impulse. It is a thing that happens, and there is no more appropriate place to get fed up than at the job site itself. And that puts it squarely in-context.

Or, context could be assigned a different meaning, as being appropriate to the person’s life situation, rather than their work situation. If a little daughter needs to get her crossed eyes operated on, this is not the time for a person with a job to spit on the office floor and make a dramatic exit. The child needs the medical bill paid.

And that is exactly the kind of addict behavior that relatives so deeply hate and fear. However, to qualify it as out of context is still a judgment call, made from the perspective of the other affected people; but not necessarily from the addict’s standpoint.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Image by Foxcroft Academy

Displacement Questions

In a paper titled “The displacement mechanism: a new explanation and treatment for obesity,” Dr. Pretlow described the traditional notion of displacement, which seems to include such concepts as textbook explanations of how displacement behavior can occur in connection with feeding. For instance,

Both male turkeys and cocks when fighting, will suddenly stop and go eat, if food is available, even though they are not hungry, and then go back to fighting again.

One can see why a novice might wonder if there is more to this than meets the eye. Hunger is a very subjective sensation. When scientists observe this stop-and-start fighting behavior, how do they know whether a bird is hungry or not? It seems like a large assumption to make.

What seems like another possibly unwarranted assumption, is that fight and flight are the only two “appropriate” responses. Maybe doing nothing at all should be designated as an acceptable reply; as part of nature. Sometimes, a bird does stand still.

But even in that case, the scientists seem to think there are only three correct natural responses when a bird is challenged to fight: either fly away, jump in there and mix it up, or stand frozen. But to eat, or straighten its feathers, or pick at a nearby stalk of grass, these activities are deemed “inappropriate” in what seems like quite an arbitrary and judgmental way.

A missing dimension?

Traditionally, displacement activity is defined as normal behavior that happens out of context and is irrepressible. Again, one might ask, “How do the observers know for sure that the bird is trying hard to repress its urge to pick at a grass stalk, but then does it anyway under an irresistible compulsion?” This too seems like a large assumption. These assumptions turn “context” into a rather fuzzy and inchoate notion.

Dr. Pretlow notes that…

[…] addictive behavior doesn’t make sense to the person involved nor to others around them. For example, why binge eat or get drunk when the boss yells at you? It is out-of-context behavior; the behavior doesn’t fit with the situation at hand.

There might be a footnote to the idea that addictive behavior does not make sense to the person involved. The person might feel differently about it at a later time, like when they’re at a 12-step meeting, confessing how they stole their little sister’s birthday money. But it probably did make ultimate sense when they were doing it, because nothing makes more sense to an addict than getting the next fix — no matter what kind of objectively atrocious behavior that might involve.

Whose job is it to decree whether behavior fits with the situation at hand? If a person in a particular “set and setting” is doing that behavior, then it is in context.

At a fancy church wedding with 200 guests, changing one’s mind at the altar is certainly not deemed to be “in-context” behavior. And yet, human beings have done it. And if saying “no” even at that late moment saved the bride, the groom, and their potential children from lives of misery, it was the right move. To say that behavior does not fit or is out of context — that’s a judgment call.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!
Image by Mark Freeth/CC BY 2.0

Training the Treacherous Mouth

In an essay on mindful eating, Cheryl Harris, MPH, R.D., gives detailed instructions on how to experience food with expanded consciousness:

Observe the appearance and texture. Is there an aroma? What kind of changes do you notice in your body as you observe this food? (Answers may include salivation, impatience, anticipation, and nothing.)

Place a small amount of the food in your mouth, and do not chew it. After 30 seconds (wait 1 minute for chocolate), start chewing.

This is the kind of thing that psychedelic adventurers would do. For a baby, it’s like that all the time. Everything hits with seismic impact. It’s no wonder they make faces.

A dangerous proclivity

Childhood Obesity News has mentioned the branch of science devoted to the promotion of eating addiction; a mission accomplished through the manufacture and promotion of junk food. Legions of dedicated scientists perform meticulous research on big topics like flavor and satiety, and more specific traits like mouth feel, dryness, gumminess, and moisture release.

In Overweight: What Kids Say, Dr. Pretlow wrote about general principles and about chocolate, the most craved food, specifically:

Sensory-specific satiety also became a guiding principle for the processed-food industry. The biggest hits […] owe their success to complex formulas that pique the taste buds enough to be alluring but don’t have a distinct, overriding single flavor that tells the brain to stop eating.

Chocolate may be licked, sucked, or chewed with a great deal of tongue and jaw action, in other words displacement activity, which relieves stress, even more so if crunchy nuts are present. In addition, chocolate is sweet, creamy, and soothing — hence comfort food.

Tame the mouth

Melissa Santos, Clinical Director of the Obesity Center at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, suggests a trick to subdue the mouth’s power in children:

Set up times during the day they go to brush their teeth. Nothing tastes good with a minty fresh mouth. So the best way to not give into snacking is doing something like brushing your teeth often throughout the day.

If the mouth can be tamed, there is still plenty of potential for overeating inspired by other factors: for example, the colonies of tiny organisms that we host. For Scientific American, Claudia Wallis wrote:

Rapid gene-sequencing techniques have revealed that the biggest and most diverse metropolises of “microbiota” reside in the large intestine and mouth, although impressive communities also flourish in the genital tract and on our skin.

Apparently, percentage-wise, they are slightly more populous in the digestive system than in the mouth, with the other named areas having not nearly so many.

The brain is in on it, too. A brain region called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), along with some others, exerts inhibitory control — or is supposed to, anyway. But if this brain area is under-active, which it is in many obese people, the inhibitory signaling might be muffled or missing. The result will be more like the brains of our distant ancestors, who directly equated eating with raw, basic survival.

In an article titled, “I Didn’t Sin — It Was My Brain,” Christopher Buzelli and Kat McGowan disclosed that in obese individuals’ brains, “the regions that regulate sensory information from the mouth and tongue are more active, suggesting that they may experience the sensations of eating differently.” The trouble is, while their sensory processing is at a high pitch, research has shown their reward sensitivity to be lower.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “COVID-19 and childhood obesity: When two pandemics collide,” FOX61.com, 02/10/21
Source: “How Gut Bacteria Help Make Us Fat and Thin,” ScientificAmerican.com, 06/01/14
Source: “I Didn’t Sin — It Was My Brain,” DiscoverMagazine.com, 10/05/09
Image by Brewbooks/CC BY-SA 2.0

The Treacherous Mouth, Again

Researchers Adam Drewnowski and Eva Almiron-Roig wrote about the palatability, or hedonic quality of food:

Sensory processes begin with the placement of food in the mouth, the fracturing of the food by the teeth and its dilution with saliva, oral perception of temperature and texture, and the binding of taste and flavor molecules to receptors in the oral and nasal cavities… A particular hedonic synergy is obtained by pairing sugar and fat.

The authors go into great detail about how fat, in particular, is received and perceived by the body. It is the source of the smooth creaminess and moist tenderness that make some comfort foods so irresistible. But fat is multi-talented. A different cooking method can make it crispy, crunchy, and delicious in a whole different way.

There is a point where sweetness becomes too sweet, especially for adults, though children don’t seem to mind. The point where sweetness turns to “yuck” is called the hedonic breakpoint. Fat does not seem to have a hedonic breakpoint, so combining it with sugar promotes overeating very effectively.

Look at yourself

A famous comedic character on Saturday Night Live was a therapist whose advice in every case was, “Look at yourself.” In other words, observe your behavior and your attitudes about it, from an impartial distance. Raise your own consciousness.

It is good to be cognizant of what nourishes us, and to be thankful for it. During holiday gatherings, many religious traditions consist of ritualistic eating. It’s a method of teaching the expected behaviors in society, without singling out any individual for blame. Some recite a food blessing before every meal, every day. The goal is to foster mental and emotional responses to food that will promote a sane and healthy society. There are other mechanisms for it too, that are not spiritually based.

Dr. Josh Axe is a certified doctor of natural medicine and chiropractic, as well as a clinical nutritionist who works with professional athletes, among others. Exodus Health Center, which he started some years ago, “grew to become one of the largest functional medicine clinics in the world.” His advice is, “Observe the way you eat”:

This includes your speed, level of tension, thoughts, and mannerisms. See yourself from a distance, as if watching yourself in a movie. Do you eat very fast and like you’re rushed? Do you feel guilty even while eating a food? Are you picking up one bite while another is still in your mouth?

There are certain “home truths” we need to realize. For instance, the mouth does not have good judgment about when it is done with the current task. It will cheerfully swallow half-chewed food to make room for the next load. If we don’t want to become obese, one of our jobs is to keep an eye on that mouth and make it behave reasonably.

A mixed blessing?

Is it positive or negative to have a keen, impressionable sense of taste? To be capable of savoring flavors may or may not be a good thing. For some people, better-tasting food leads them to keep on eating it whenever possible, so if it’s possible all the time, that could spell trouble.

On the other hand, even with a pile of not-very-tasty food, an optimist will persist in eating their way through it, hoping that they will eventually land on something delicious. Then, we have the special cases, like chemotherapy patients who have no appetite. They really need the nourishment, but hypersensitivity to the smell, taste, or even the thought of food can make everything revolting.

Hooked on foods

Dr. Pretlow speaks of conditions that do not apply to drugs. For instance, judging by the number of people who enjoy sucking on lollipops and popsicles, and later on straws, toothpicks, cigars, and other objects, a lot of people seem to never outgrow the pacifier effect. Aside from sucking, the actions of biting, chewing, and swallowing are also very satisfactory with food, as well as the immediate taste and texture factors experienced in the mouth. Unlike a drug, there is not as much of a central chemical response.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Chapter 11 Human Perceptions and Preferences for Fat-Rich Foods,” NIH.gov, undated
Source: “Mindful Eating — Maintain a Healthy Weight & Appetite,” Draxe.com, undated
Image by DFID/CC BY 2.0