When asked what substance he was first addicted to, guitarist Eric Clapton answered: “sugar.”  And we all know the person who kicked the “hard drugs” only to become reliant on food as their “go-to” addiction of choice.

So, are we all doomed for food addiction?

Well, 97% of people prescribed opioid painkillers (with no history of addiction) don’t become addicts.  And most of us wouldn’t rob a 7-11 for candy bars if the price of candy bars became unaffordable.  But some people are more susceptible to addiction, whether it’s opioids or candy bars.

Thus, addiction is complicated: Social, motivational, emotional, and genetic factors all interact to create an addiction experience. An addictive substance alone doesn’t create addiction. However, some things are more addictive than others.

We often joke “I’m a ___ addict”, whether that’s video games, shoes, or ice cream. But what, exactly, is real addiction? And is it a useful concept for understanding food behaviour?

What is addiction?

Addiction is an overpowering craving to repeatedly engage in an activity that provides temporary relief at the expense of terrible consequences. It’s something you feel compelled to do, even though it harms you.

To count as an addiction, there must also be withdrawal — feelings of discomfort, distress, and intense cravings – when our addictive substance or behaviour is taken away or stopped.

What is food addiction?

Thus, food addiction involves a regular compulsion to eat and/or consume particular foods, even though those foods harm us — whether that’s because the foods are unhealthy (e.g. high in sugar), or because they make us sick, or cause us to become obese.

An occasional big meal: not addiction. Regularly eating so much, and so rapidly, that you end up bloated and nauseated — but feel unable to stop? Potential addiction.

After having a couple of cookies (or any potentially addictive food), a non-addict will feel indifferent about eating more.  The experience of an addict is much different.  Addicts become utterly single-minded in the pursuit of their “hit”. Eating a couple of cookies (or any potentially addictive food) sets off an abnormal reaction – and they want more and more until they’re physically unable to swallow.

If you aren’t an addict, it’s not that you are a master of self-control, you just don’t have an insatiable appetite for more.

A food addict can be:

• an overweight woman who is always trying a new diet
• a man who eats beyond fullness at dinner after snacking on junk food all day to help deal with job stress
• a thin woman who never eats enough and is hungry all the time because she’s afraid of getting fat (in this case, her “hit” is not eating)
• a lonely guy with nothing to do on a Friday night except watch TV and eat several bags of chips
• a person who snacks all day to ease the boredom of an un-stimulating life
• a perfectionist who is never quite satisfied with their body
• a person suffering from a nutrition related disease (e.g., heart disease, diabetes, etc.) who gets disturbingly resistant when presented with treatment approaches

Some food addicts eat too much; some don’t consume enough.  For a food addict, food provides the fun, entertainment, control, reassurance, or love that’s missing in their life.  Food may also help to numb difficult emotions like fear and sadness.  Some people even have addiction to restriction.

The Yale Food Addiction test is a clinical tool for assessing food addiction (click to download in PDF).

Food dependence

But here’s the problem with determining food addiction: Unlike, say, heroin or gambling, we need food to live. Without an innate desire for food, we can wave bye-bye to evolution.

At what point does “big appetite” end and “food addiction” begin? And can you technically become “addicted” to something you need?

Researchers, while divided on the exact definition of “food addiction” or whether it truly exists, nevertheless agree that addiction is a pattern of behaviour characterized by things like:

• near-constant searches for a “hit”
• an intense compulsion and/or desire for the substance or behaviour
• strong, all-encompassing focus on getting that “hit”
• withdrawal symptoms when the “hit” is taken away
• needing more, or more intense “hits” as tolerance develops over time

By this definition, nearly anything — including food, water, or sex (i.e. things that are part of basic biology) — can be an addiction.

So let’s call it “food dependence”.

Over time, food (substance) dependence often becomes less about the high and more about preventing the negative feelings that come from abstinence.  The ability to get pleasure from the food becomes more difficult, because small amounts of the same food aren’t as rewarding.

Substance dependence: Official definitions

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) defines “substance dependence” as 3 or more of the following 7 symptoms occurring within 1 year. We’ll look at how these might relate to food dependence.

Symptom 1: I use more over time.

Over time, tolerance increases.

Food example: When I used to buy groceries, I would take them home, eat a snack and go on with my day.  Now I buy groceries and I eat all day long until I have gone through half of what I bought.

Symptom 2: I have withdrawal symptoms.

I now take the substance to avoid withdrawal.

Food example: I eat processed snacks to correct being tired and/or depressed.  To fix anxiety, I eat something crunchy, like chips or crackers to calm myself. I am afraid if I stop using food to correct my emotions, I will have nothing else to turn to.

Symptom 3: I use more than I intend.

Food example: One bowl of ice cream turns into 2 bowls, then 3 bowls.  I start with one handful of chips and end up eating the whole bag.

Symptom 4: I’m trying or have tried to cut back.

I want to reduce my intake, and I’ve tried, but haven’t been successful.

Food example: I have tried to cut down or stop my eating, but it’s always on my mind and I find a way to defeat myself, even making a special trip to get a candy bar or chips.

Symptom 5: I spend time pursuing, using, or recovering from use.

I spend a lot of time on activities necessary to obtain the substance, or recover from its effects.

Food example: I will have a list of chores to do on Saturday.  I will go to the store and buy groceries and spend the rest of the day eating what I bought, taking antacids, and sleeping.

Symptom 6: I miss important activities because of my substance use.

I miss or give up important social, occupational, or recreational activities.

Food example: I come home and eat.  Then, I’m too full to exercise or meet with friends.

Symptom 7: I eat despite knowing the consequences.

I continue to abuse the substance despite knowing it’s giving me a persistent or recurrent physical or physiological problem.

Food example: I eat in spite of horrible knee pain from obesity.  I’m so uncomfortable after a binge that I can’t lay down without regurgitation into my esophagus.  My blood pressure is high.  I’m miserable.  I am embarrassed and afraid about being in social situations but I overeat anyway.

Time magazine graphic: Addiction: What happens in the brain?

What influences food addiction?

Many factors play a role in the development of food addiction.

Fear: Addicts may fear eating a reasonable amount of food, getting fat, and/or experiencing uncomfortable emotions and hunger.

Chronic overeating: Eating too much of highly processed foods can stimulate brain opiates — “feel good” chemicals. Regular bingeing might create a dependency on this “natural high”.  We become dependent on a highly processed diet to feel “normal” and experience withdrawal symptoms when we don’t eat it.

Food restriction: What if I told you that starting tomorrow you could never have ice cream again?  What would you do today?  Probably eat a bunch of ice cream – right?  Cravings and reward responses from food are greater after a period of food restriction (whether real or imagined) and/or nutrient depletion. This is why diets and extreme restriction almost inevitably lead to binges.

Stress: Various forms of stress can trigger addiction. Binging + food restriction + stress = a winning combination for food addiction. Addiction can lie dormant when things are going well, then rear its ugly head when life trouble strikes.

Depression: Depression usually changes appetite, hunger, and fullness signals, as well as sleep patterns (normally, good quality sleep helps us manage urges — sleep is “willpower fuel”).

Weak satiety mechanisms: Some people who struggle with food addiction aren’t as tuned in to their fullness cues. They “hear” hunger signals more loudly than satiety signals.

Automaticity: Food behaviours can be strongly ingrained habits that “wear a groove” into our nervous system. Some argue that they can’t be eliminated — just rendered dormant (temporarily).

What makes food addictive?

Are all pleasurable foods automatically addictive?  Probably not.

Hyperpalatability

Processed foods are engineered in ways that exceed basic reward properties of traditional whole foods, making them hyperpalatable.

Consider items such as ice cream, burgers, candy, melted cheeses, buttery/oily sauces, and so on – these are the foods that stimulate the release of opioids and dopamine in the brain and have addictive potential (note: artificial sweeteners can even trigger a dopamine response).

Rodent studies confirm this: Rats are unlikely to binge on normal rat chow. But when given the option of sweeter and fattier rat chow, rats go on a bender.

The table below shows the characteristics of some “normal” foods and some hyperpalatable foods. Notice how much higher in sugar, fat, and/or sodium the hyperpalatable foods are — and how many ingredients each food contains.

What differentiates regular from hyperpalatable foods? Source: Gearhardt AN, et al. Can food be addictive? Public health and policy implications. Addiction. 2011;106:1208-1212.

Other things can contribute to the addictive potential of food:

Quantity: When served more, we eat more.

Processing & energy density: The right mix of fat, sweeteners, flours, caffeine and salt provides a strong reward.  Plain sugar packets or a bottle of olive oil aren’t very desirable.  Processed foods have combinations of ingredients not found in nature.  Many food components, like drugs, are not addictive until extracted and concentrated by modern processing (a whole grain vs. white flour in cake, a whole fruit vs. sugar in cookies, cocaine vs. cocoa leaves, opium vs. poppies, etc.).

Variety: When there are different colours, sizes, shapes, tastes, and textures, we eat more.  People will eat more cookie dough ice cream versus plain vanilla and more trail mix versus plain raw almonds.

Nutrient composition of foods: When we eat nutrient-poor foods, we may end up eating more overall food in order to meet nutrient needs.

Access: The number one factor in addiction is availability.  If the substance isn’t available, we can’t develop an addiction.  When the substance is readily available, addiction will be more common (think: cigarettes in vending machines).

Cultural norms: When a behavior/substance is accepted within a group, it’s unlikely that behaviour will stop. Many folks cut down on or quit smoking when jurisdictions outlawed smoking in restaurants and bars.

Individual preferences

Think about what foods have an “addictive” potential for you.  It’s important to consider these questions because any one food isn’t universally “addictive.”

• What foods do you crave?
• What foods do you think about you aren’t physically hungry?
• What foods do you want to eat more of, even when you’re full?
• What foods do you typically deprive yourself of — but later, feel unable to control yourself around?
• What foods have emotional associations for you — say, foods you remember from childhood, or foods that seem to have “special powers” to make you feel better?

Answers to the aforementioned questions don’t usually include barley, pears, asparagus and black beans (but it’s possible).

While whole foods in their most unprocessed form are still potentially addictive (think sweet fruits and fatty nuts), the potential for true dependence/addiction is low compared to processed foods (such as fruit candies and flavoured fatty nuts).

Treating addiction

People aren’t responsible for having an addiction, but they are responsible for dealing with it.

To treat addiction, you must address the following factors:

Food availability and environment

If you feel out of control with certain foods or in certain situations, you probably are.

Our behaviour depends heavily on social and environmental cues. We can adjust our behaviour by adjusting cues from our routine and environment.

Thus: Avoid people, places, and things that trigger addiction. Use social pressure to your advantage. Addicts don’t like to use their drug with sober people staring at them.

The more available — and socially acceptable — an addictive substance is, the easier it is to get hooked. Make it hard to get.

Emotions

Food doesn’t help resolve emotions. And emotions aren’t a bad thing. They actually serve a useful purpose in life and can indicate that something is out of balance.

Food can be used as a coping mechanism for emotions that feel intolerable. Once a “food rush” wears off, we’re left with the very same emotional problems… plus the additional problems addiction brings.

Many addictions stem from uncontrolled stress combined with food restriction. If these two factors can be controlled, food addiction might also be controlled.

Pharmaceuticals

What about appetite suppressants and drugs that eliminate the high from addictive foods?  These so-called solutions open up new problems (e.g., undereating, malnutrition, etc).

Compliance to pharmaceuticals like naltrexone (blocks the high someone gets from a drug) and antabuse (makes someone sick if they drink alcohol) tend to be poor.  Why?  Because people want the high again.  Even if an appetite suppressant drug is developed, the food addiction will still remain.  This has little to do with the addictive food itself and more to do with a deficiency elsewhere in life – boredom, loneliness, anger, lack of stimulation, lack of purpose, etc.

Cravings die as a side effect of changing our life and identity — medication is, at best, only a partial and temporary solution.

However, pharmaceuticals that may be useful in addiction recovery include those that treat underlying conditions leading to emotional distress (pain, depression, etc.).

Abstinence

While we can’t choose to be addicted, we can choose to abstain in order to sustain recovery. Some claim that as an addict, it’s easier to give up the addictive substance entirely than to negotiate with it.

In this case, freedom comes when we give up effort to control the substance and become abstinent. Recovery from addiction means having the restoration of choice.

However, abstinence means that addicts must be willing to face discomfort. Luckily, the longer an addict remains abstinent, the more biological urges for the substance fade. Withdrawal is worst in the beginning.

If urges return, they’re often the result of conditioned reflexes and/or the desire to escape emotional distress. Managing stress and knowing “triggers” is thus an important part of recovery.

Meaning

Recovery from addiction needs meaning and purpose.  Without meaning, there is no reason to remain abstinent.

External meanings (e.g., how the body looks, a spouse, a friend) can be fleeting.  We love them one day, hate them the next.

If we count on external meanings for sustained change, there’s a good chance we’ll be dissatisfied. Dissatisfaction fuels resentment, and soon enough we remember that overeating is a quick way to forget about the entire mess.

Meaning is one of the reasons why the idea of a “higher power” in many addiction recovery programs is appealing.  A higher power isn’t fleeting, it’s eternal. However, what’s most important is that the meaning and purpose is internal — it comes from the inside and reflects the person’s deeper values and life priorities.

Getting a handle on food addiction often requires a temporary hiatus from mirror and scale obsession. Instead, we must prioritize what’s going on inside.

Dieting

Reason is no match for addiction. Addiction is mostly an emotional-biological phenomenon.

Thus, addicts tend to be unable to rely on self-control alone — which doesn’t mean they are “weak”. (In fact, given how hard most food addicts try to change — even if unsuccessfully — arguably their will is very strong.)

The struggle with food addiction often leads to dieting, over-exercising, purging, drugs, binging, and weight gain/loss.  These are efforts to control the addiction, but these efforts are often unrealistic, become lenient, and eventually fail (and this failure can lead to more addictive behaviors). In fact, restriction and obsession with “fixing the problem” itself can create more rebounds.

Structural changes

“Willpower” helps, but it’s weak compared to structural and foundational changes. This includes things like:

• changing one’s physical environment
• building a social support system (including getting away from people who enable the addiction)
• making it tougher to get at the addictive substances
• decreasing life stress, and/or working on stress management
• learning to tolerate discomfort, and getting support in doing so
• changing one’s routine and schedule to favour positive behaviours, and diminish the chances for negative behaviours (which can include things like getting more sleep, seeking out safer situations during “trigger times”, scheduling activities that conflict with the addictive behaviour, etc.)

Other tidbits and factoids

Food addiction factoids

Reward threshold — or the amount of substance needed to get a “high” — increases over time. Addicts need more and more. Eventually, many don’t get a “high” or any pleasure at all — the addiction focuses around managing withdrawal.

Reward thresholds increase over time. Source: Kenny PJ. Reward mechanisms in obesity: New insights and future directions. Neuron. 2011;69:664-679.

The earlier we start eating hyperpalatable foods, the more likely we are to get hooked on them. This means that good childhood nutrition is very important — and processed foods targeted at children are a major potential health problem.

In related factoids, the longer we’re exposed to innately desirable foods, the more difficult they are to resist.  Self-control is a limited resource. So, if you struggle with being near certain foods, get away from them — fast. Get them out of your house, and move yourself away from them. Don’t torture or tempt yourself with physical proximity.

Those who prefer to binge on sweet foods tend to binge more frequently than folks who prefer to binge on fatty or salty foods.

Addicts often have higher levels of dopamine circulating in their brains than non-addicts. It’s not clear whether that’s a cause or consequence of eating.

Binge eating (independent of body weight), rather than weight, is more closely associated with addictive eating patterns. In other words, behaviour predicts addiction better than body size, weight, or fatness.

Some data indicate that compared to women, men are more likely to overeat once they begin, and are more likely to eat more than their body needs.

Philosophical musings

In the U.S., many self-destructive compulsions are considered normal. This means it’s harder to identify problem behaviours as addictions or dependencies. Indeed, if someone were to design a society ideal for food addiction – North America would probably be it.

If we quit eating a certain food – are we addicted to abstaining?

Buddhist teachings have long stated that attachment is the root of all suffering. Could this — along with mindfulness training and learning to “be present” with discomfort — be the key to unlocking addiction?

Further resources

What’s harder to kick – food or chemicals? 

Substance related disorders

Food Addiction Summit

Food Addicts Anonymous

For more on appetite and addiction, see here:

All About Appetite – Part 1

All About Appetite – Part 2

Research Roundup: Food Addiction

Is Food Addiction Real?

Kessler, David. The End of Overeating.  2009.  Rodale.

Barnard N & Stepaniak J.  Breaking the Food Seduction.  2003.  St. Martins.

References

Velez-Mitchell.  Addict Nation.  2011.  Health Communications, Inc.

Finlayson G, et al.  The Regulation of Food Intake in Humans.  http://www.endotext.org/obesity/obesity7.3/obesity7-3.html

Cohen DA.  Neurophysiological pathways to obesity: Below awareness and beyond individual control.  Diabetes 2008;57:1768-1773.

Milkman KL, Rogers T, Bazerman MH.  Harnessing our inner angels and demons: What we have learned about want/should conflicts and how that knowledge can help us reduce short-sighted decision making.  Perspectives on Psychological Science 2008;3:324-338.

Five Techniques for Avoiding Short-Sighted Decision-Making. PsyBlog. http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/06/five-techniques-for-avoiding-short-sighted-decision-making.php
Committee on Assessing Interactions Among Social, Behavioral, and Genetic Factors in Health, Lyla M. Hernandez and Dan G. Blazer, Editors.  Genes, Behavior, and the Social Environment: Moving beyond the nature/nurture debate.  2006.  National Academy of Sciences.  http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11693

Kessler DA.  The End of Overeating.  2009.  Rodale.

Barnard N.  Breaking the Food Seduction.  2003.  St. Martins.

Szalavitz M.  Heroin vs. Haagen-Dazs: What food addiction looks like in the brain.  April 4, 2011.  http://healthland.time.com/2011/04/04/heroin-vs-haagen-dazs-what-food-addiction-looks-like-in-the-brain

Szalavitz M.  Hooked on addiction: From food to drugs to internet porn.  April 15, 2011.  http://healthland.time.com/2011/04/15/hooked-on-addiction-from-food-to-drugs-to-internet-porn/

Parylak SL, Koob GF, Zorrilla EP.  The dark side of food addiction.  Physiology & Behavior 2011;104:149-156.

Wenk GL.  Your brain on food.  2010.  Oxford University Press.

Obesity and food addiction summit webcasts: http://www.foodaddictionsummit.org/agenda.htm

Avena NM, Rada P, Hoebel BG.  Evidence for sugar addiction: Behavioral and neurochemical effects of intermittent, excessive sugar intake.  Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2008;32:20-39.

Gearhardt AN, et al.  Can food be addictive?  Public health and policy implications.  Addiction. 2011;106:1208-1212.

Sandor RS.  Thinking simply about addiction.  2009.  Penguin Books.

Blumenthal DM & Gold MS.  Neurobiology of food addiction.  Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care. 2010;13:359-365.

Ifland JR, et al.  Refined food addiction: A classic substance use disorder.  Medical Hypotheses. 2009;72:518-526.

Kenny PJ.  Reward mechanisms in obesity: New insights and future directions.  Neuron. 2011;69:664-679.

Avena NM, Rada P Hoebel BG. Sugar and fat bingeing have notable differences in addictive-like behavior. J Nutr. 2009;139:623-628.

McQuillan S. Breaking the bonds of food addiction.  Psychology Today.  2004.  Penguin Group.

Kiernan J.  Why Food is Addiction is Often Deadlier Than Drinking or Drugs. The Fix.  June 23, 2011.  Accessed here: http://www.thefix.com/content/oa-vs-aa

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Gluttony is the excessive consumption that deprives another being of a life-giving necessity. Gluttons devour more, leaving others with less. It’s immoderation.

Beyond consumption, gluttony describes worship of food and deriving excessive pleasure from it.

In this painting, The Last Judgement, the gluttons have actually become food. Heaven is on the left, and hell on the right. On the right, the eaters are being eaten. Click to enlarge.

Gluttony also extends into material goods and other physical pleasures. “-aholic” is the suffix attached to the glutton’s “meal” of choice.

Those with excess body fat often carry the burden of gluttony, but weight doesn’t necessarily indicate gluttonous patterns. “Healthy” eaters can be immoderate too. Just as someone can be angry about the right thing but express it in the wrong way, someone can eat healthy food in a way that is gluttonous.

The more natural and necessary the activity (e.g., eating and sex), the more pleasurable it is. If we didn’t get pleasure from eating and procreating, we’d have a population of 100 and suffer from rickets.

Gluttony creeps in when our desires spiral out of control and get excessive with food. This is challenging in modern society, since our appetite is subject to external authoritative psychological influences. For more, see All About Appetite Part 1 and Part 2.

Grasping gluttony

Thinkers, philosophers, and social regulators have struggled for centuries with how to define and understand gluttony.

• Is it a normal, acceptable part of human nature?
• Should we view gluttony as a natural response to abundance or as a moral or personal failure of self-control?
• Is it harmful to individuals or society?

Late Roman and medieval European thinkers in particular were quite preoccupied with this question, as attempts to impose new, more austere religious regimes on rural societies conflicted with traditional, often highly indulgent, “pagan” celebrations held by people whose “nasty, brutish, and short” daily lives were organized by the feast-famine cycles of harvest.

However, other world religions and spiritual traditions have also offered their thoughts on what gluttony means. (More on this below.)

Generally, gluttony can include:

1. Not savouring a reasonable amount of food
2. Eating outside of a prescribed time (mindless eating)
3. Anticipating eating with preoccupied longing
4. Consuming costly foods (eating lavishly simply for the purpose of conspicuous consumption)
5. Not being content with “common” foods; always seeking delicacies (or, perhaps, Supersizing)
6. Paying too much attention to food (which includes paying too much attention to how we look – which, they argue, can become idolatry)

In the Bible, the word “glutton” is used to portray someone who eats because they want food rather than need it. Christian religious thinker Thomas Aquinas, writing in the 1200s, equated gluttons to children, since they are governed by pleasure from appetite and their behavior is ruled by it.

Interestingly, many of these insights sound very familiar to those of us trying to teach and practice “mindful eating” and the PN-style way of living.

Such insights also raise questions about our own consumption habits.

Does “gluttony” involve simply how much we eat?

Or should it apply more broadly to our overall consumption patterns?

For instance, what about:

The massive fast food burger?	The expensive coconut ice cream?	The apple shipped from New Zealand?

Gluttony as a sin

The concept of “sin” is a contentious one. In 2010, we think of the world differently than, say, medieval Europeans.

The Christian concept of seven “deadly sins” originated from early Christian monk Evagrius’ original list of eight evil thoughts (later modified by Saint John Cassian and Pope Gregory to what we’re familiar with). Gluttony is considered a deadly sin.

(For reference, the other deadly sins include are pride (vanity), greed (covetousness), lust, envy, anger, and sloth.)

In the original context, a sin was only deadly if it opposed one’s love of God (their higher power).

For example, if someone merely ate more than necessary, they have committed an “excusable” sin. It’s only “deadly” when they’re so taken by the pleasure of eating that it turns them away from spiritual instructions.

In the modern context, we might say that when something governs our life, it can become a destructive habit that undermines our goodness of character, getting worn in over time. And really, at its core, gluttony is about separating ourselves from others (family, friends, culture, etc.).

For instance, writers such as Geneen Roth and Allen Zadoff describe isolating themselves socially — locking themselves into their homes alone — so that they can over-consume food. Nowadays, we might call this “binge eating disorder”. But the outcome — self-harm and social/spiritual isolation — is the same.

Gluttony and spiritual traditions

Given the philosophical importance of the concept of gluttony, it’s no surprise, then, that world spiritual traditions have often tackled the question of gluttony. Here’s a sampler.

Buddhism

One of the Buddhist precepts is: “To abstain from taking food at inappropriate times.” They also encourage avoiding sensory excess. Some Buddhists say that if gluttony cannot be conquered, any ambitious spiritual pursuit is doomed to fail. Gluttony is referred to as one of the vices.

General Christianity

Jesus taught humans that they cannot live by bread alone.

Gluttony (related to food) is rarely mentioned in the Christian Bible. You’ll see more about enjoying food rather than warning against excess. (After observing the donut spread at a Methodist church last Sunday, this doesn’t surprise me.)

Still, the New Testament encourages one to be sensible with intake and observe the body as a temple. The concept of willpower actually came from Christian teachings about temptation. Deuteronomy 21:20 ordains that “a glutton and a drunkard” is to be stoned to death by the elders in his city. Yikes.

Hinduism

Hinduism considers greed a root of other evils and discusses the importance of avoiding excess in all areas.

Islam

Those of Islam faith practice regular fasting and discourage overeating. They claim that gluttony feeds on itself, with the appetite growing when indulged. When appetite is restrained, it becomes frail.

Judaism

Eating is a sacred act and the idea of keeping kosher relates to self-control. Still, on the holiday of Purim, overconsumption is encouraged.

Why is gluttony important?

If someone is preoccupied with food, they tend to neglect relationships with others. This includes relationships with significant others, society and the more intangible dimensions of life. Gluttony resembles any form of disordered eating, since they all reflect disordered relationships.

Faith vs food

Around the world, people devote their entire lives to a spiritual doctrine. Many say that there is nothing more powerful than spiritual pursuits.

As we’ve seen, major world faiths generally suggest that their adherents avoid immoderation. Yet based on current food/drink consumption trends in developed nations, it appears that most people don’t believe eating too much food is a crime against anyone or anything.

Indeed, this is a paradox: Nearly all religions have sanctions against gluttony. Still, data indicate that those who claim to observe organized religion are more likely to be overweight than other Americans.

• 78% of U.S. adults claim to be Christian
• 67% of U.S. adults are overweight or obese
• 1 out of 2 adults in industrialized countries die of either cancer of heart disease (diseases generally due to excess)

(Note: 16% of U.S. adults say they are unaffiliated to any organized religion; 5% of U.S. adults claim to follow other religions)

In religion, we’re often reminded about wrongdoing — lying, stealing, cheating, murder, abortion, and so forth. Gluttony is forgotten.

Or is it?

For every one book about adultery, stealing, or abortion – we have nearly 10 covering diet/overeating. We also have many books about dealing with the consequences of social and spiritual isolation.

Cultural language has replaced moral language in our society. We hear about diets, nutrition and eating disorders – but little about gluttony and sins. Our way of offsetting gluttony is with dieting, Weight Watchers and gyms… until the next plunge into immoderation and excess.

Excessive tendencies

Gluttony is about excess. And beyond weight, we tend to get excessive in North America with many areas related to food.

• In the U.S., we waste about 20-25% of all food purchased for the home. This equates to about 474.5 pounds per year.
• Added sweeteners comprise nearly 20% of the U.S. diet.
• Americans eat over 220 pounds of meat per person, per year.
• The U.S. diet is primarily processed and animal foods.
• The average American consumes 12.28 lb of chocolate per year.
• Nearly 70% of those above the age of 18 years in most industrialized countries drink alcohol. Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis is the 12th leading cause of death in the U.S.
• A study of 19-30 year olds revealed that 45% of men and 27% of women reported heavy drinking in the past two weeks.
• Today, 18,000 kids will die because they are malnourished. That’s 6 times the number killed on September 11th.

Many wealthier nations not only fail to solve these problems, they fail to even look for them. Does gluttony feed into this ignorance?

Summary

It may seem strange to use an “old” concept in a modern world. Yet the notion of gluttony, and what it implies, is still very relevant in a food-saturated world where people are searching for health and a higher purpose.

Regardless of your spiritual leanings, gluttony can thus be defined as some kind of excessive consumption that:

• harms us physically and psychologically;
• isolates us from ourselves and others;
• shifts our focus to unhealthy domains and preoccupations; and
• wastes resources.

Before part 2, here are a few questions to establish where you stand with gluttonous tendencies:

1. Do you consume food/drink (or other things) past the point of fullness/satiation/satisfaction?
2. Do you focus excessively on this consumption?
3. Is your consumption harming your body?
4. Is it harming your relationships?
5. Is the well-being of others compromised by your food/drink cravings?
6. Are your food/drink habits dedicated to serving your own immediate gratification rather than serving your life mission and deeper values?

Further resources

All About Appetite Part 1

All About Appetite Part 2

All About Alcoholic Beverages

All About Food Waste

All About “Natural” Sweeteners

References

Cook J. Seven. Zondervan. 2008

Deyoung RK. Glittering Vices. Brazos Press. 2009.

U.S. Religious Landscape Survey.

Okholm D. Rx For Gluttony. Christianity Today Sept 4 2000;62-66.

Shipley O. A Theory About Sin. Macmillan and Co. 1875.

Diamond A. If gluttony is a sin, perhaps we are all sinners. Nursing Standard. 2009;24:28.

Prose F. Gluttony. Oxford University Press. 2003.

Phillips R. Thou Shalt Not Overeat. BeliefNet.

Kirkham T. Endocannabinoids and the neurochemistry of gluttony. J of Neuroendocrinology 2008;20:1099-1100.

Okholm D. Gluttony: Thought for food. Wheaton College. Email correspondence.

Davis C & Carter JC. Compulsive overeating as an addiction disorder. A review of theory and evidence. Appetite 2009;53:1-8.

Centers for Disease Control. Statistics on Overweight/Obese.

Centers for Disease Control. Statistics on Death.

CalorieLab.com. United States of Obesity map using CDC data.

International Cocoa Initiative. Background Information.

Bringle ML. The God Of Thinness. 1992. Abingdon Press.

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The word yoga comes from the Hindi yoga, originally from pre-Indo-European yeug, meaning “union” or “to join.”

Eastern vs Western styles

Classic yoga from the east follows ancient Hindu discipline, incorporating asanas (physical exercises and postures), pranayama (breathing techniques), and meditation designed to move someone towards peace of mind and spiritual enlightenment. For Hindus and Buddhists, the goal of yoga is union with Brahman (the eternal or absolute) and Atman (your true self) – not so much about sculpting a “yoga booty.” Yoga is not a religion, but many followers use it to enrich their spiritual practice.

In the west, modern yoga styles are generally thought of as physical exercises to build flexibility and strength.

East meets West…

Yoga history

T. Krishnamacharya hitting a scorpion pose

Yoga practice can be traced back 5000 years to Indus-Sarasvati civilizations in India. (And we thought using free weights was old school.)

A Hindu teacher named Patanjali was said to  have recorded the first principles of yoga in religious scriptures known as the Yoga Sutra. Many forms of yoga have been developed since – each focusing on a new realm of personal development.

Hatha yoga came to the west in the 1920s thanks to T. Krishnamacharya and remains the most popular style today.

Why yoga is important

Yoga’s popular

The number of people practicing yoga in the U.S. has more than doubled since 1998, from 7 million to 15 million.

Nearly 5% of U.S. businesses offered yoga at the workplace in 2008. Approximately 75% of U.S. health clubs offer yoga instruction.

Yoga may make you healthier

Yogis claim numerous physical and psychological benefits result from yoga. But is there any data showing this?

Well, the double-blind test, adored by many Western health professionals, isn’t possible with yoga. If one group in a study is practicing healthy yoga, it’s hard to recruit a blind group that isn’t, and doesn’t know it. Still, yoga data does exist.

Heart disease

Yoga may help reverse heart disease. Well, when combined with aerobic exercise and a low-fat plant-based diet. The author of one study said, “Adherence to the yoga and meditation program was as strongly correlated with the changes in the amount of blockage [in the arteries] as was the adherence to diet.” Yoga may help to control inflammation throughout the body as well.

Pain, balance and flexibility

What is one of the greatest fears among the elderly? Falling. Yoga can help with balance in older folks. Just two sessions of Hatha yoga per week can increase stability. Before you dismiss yoga as a Friday night nursing home activity, yoga can improve balance in people under 60 years old too.

Yoga interventions have been shown to be effective for alleviating back pain and symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Stress and mood

Yoga has long been used for relieving stress and improving mood. Plus, since some people overeat due to stress, conquering stress with yoga might indirectly improve nutrition.

Women undergoing treatment for cancer have found yoga to be helpful for mood and controlling stress levels.

Yoga may help control anxiety and the meditation aspect of yoga can assist those in prison with self-control.

Most yoga is parasympathetic dominant, which may promote recovery from intense workouts. See the following for more on the importance of parasympathetic activities:

• All About Recovery
• JB’s Getting Control of Stress
• JB’s Ultimate Stress Busting Workout

Disordered eating and weight

Body image disturbances and disordered eating continue to increase. Authentic yoga studios have no mirrors. Rather, students’ awareness is tuned to internal sensations. Yoga offers a non-verbal adjunct to standard eating disorder therapy and provides an opportunity to unite the physical body with inner experience.

When someone encounters awkward or painful postures in yoga, they are trained to observe the tension and breathe while coaxing their muscles or joints open, or just accept it as is. This same technique can be applied to other uncomfortable situations, such as a craving for junk food or drugs.

Since yoga can help to unite the mind and body, it can be useful in regulating appetite, decreasing food preoccupation, enhancing body awareness, and boosting body satisfaction. The longer one participates in yoga, the more self-awareness and positive impact on body image/eating they develop (i.e., years may be more effective than months).

Yoga can help eliminate binge-eating patterns. This may be due to the meditation aspect and ability to heighten mindfulness.

People who practiced yoga regularly for four years or more gained less weight as they got older. Moreover, overweight individuals who practiced yoga for four or more years managed to lose weight over a 10-year period.

Yoga’s effect on neurotransmitters. From: Douglass L. "Yoga as an intervention in the treatment of eating disorders: does it help?" Eating Disorders 2009;17:126-139.

Menopause

Yoga may be useful for alleviating symptoms of menopause.

Lymphatic system

Exercise, particularly yoga can help increase lymph drainage.

Epilepsy

There have been few reliable studies using yoga for epilepsy, but the results are encouraging. Yoga may stimulate the vagus nerve, which can decrease seizure frequency.

Getting injured

This just in: You can get injured doing yoga (like most physical endeavours).

13,000 Americans have visited the ER or doctor’s office during the past three years due to yoga-related injuries. That’s outrageous. Oh, wait a minute, no it’s not. 7.6 million ER visits each year are associated with alcohol.

Yoga is dangerous for people who do too much, too soon — the folks who haven’t stretched since high school band camp and want to show off for the cute girl/guy in the front row of Saturday morning yoga. Goodbye hamstring attachment site; hello physical therapy office. You’ll see case reports of serious injuries in those attempting advanced yoga poses when they shouldn’t be.

Those who are pregnant or have glaucoma should check themselves before trying to perform any postural yoga that increases pressure in the torso and head (like inversions).

Finally, folks with hypermobility of the lumbar spine (lower back) might increase their risk of low back problems and vertebral stress fractures with poses that involve excessive hyperextension of the lumbar spine, like this:

What you should know about yoga

Be aware of your yoga instructor’s background, qualifications, experience and training. Check their style and figure out who attends their classes. Just like a coach, teacher or trainer, we all have different preferences.

Yoga styles

Virtually all forms of yoga can be traced back to the four cornerstones: ritual, knowledge, devotional and tantric.

There are many varieties of yoga to choose from. Here’s a brief description of the more popular styles.

Ayurveda

Ayurvedic yoga combines Asanas, Pranayama, and meditation. Asanas strengthen muscles, improve flexibility, and rejuvenate the body. The aim of this style is to bring natural order and balance to hormones and metabolism. Adherents see this as a natural way to treat stress-related disorders.

Anusara

All levels are invited here. There is a focus on creative freedom and individuality – so get ready to express yourself. This is a “recent” style started in 1997. You’ll probably be doing some chanting here.

Ashtanga

This discipline involves synchronizing the breath with a progressive series of postures. The result is internal heat and sweating, which detoxifies the muscles and organs.

Adherents of Ashtanga, which is the most vigorous form practised, claim that the results include improved circulation, a light and strong body, and a calm mind. It is fast paced and a high strength to bodyweight ratio is necessary.

Bikram (often called “hot”)

Imagine doing yoga in a dry sauna. Bikram yoga is a series of 26 traditional Hatha yoga postures and breathing exercises, all performed in a heated room. The entire workout takes approximately 90 minutes, and will leave you sweaty.

Hatha/Ananda (often called “restorative”)

Hatha yoga is the most commonly practised form in the West – its combination of Asanas, Pranayama and meditation providing a balanced approach to physical and mental health. It is the least strenuous yoga. If you have exercise ADD, you may get bored. If you are intimidated and figuring out where to start with yoga, this is the class.

Iyengar

This is purist yoga, named after B.K.S. Iyegar. It has a slow pace with a priority of mastering poses in isolation. Feel free to get assistance from blocks, straps or pads. Good for learning yoga fundamentals. Folks who need constant variety might get bored.

Kundalini

Are you ready to awaken kundalini? This is a form of vinyasa yoga. More spiritual than others. You’ll be getting your chant on during this class. Kundalini incorporates a number of elements, including Pranayama, Asanas, mantras (chants), and meditation. Regular practice will help you develop a healthy body and balanced mind.

Prenatal

This is an excellent way to stay in shape and prepare for the rigors of both pregnancy and childbirth. The stretching and strengthening work is of great preparation for labor, with exercises which can be safely practiced in all stages of pregnancy.

Vinyasa/power yoga

A breath-synchronized form of yoga. Most modern “power yoga” classes are this format. Requires more strength than most other styles.

Summary and recommendations

Most exercise enthusiasts acknowledge that yoga isn’t the most comprehensive workout. Yet even though it’s not optimal for increasing strength, muscle, or cardiovascular health in isolation, it’s mindful physical movement.

For those who participate in regular forms of exercise, incorporating yoga 1-2 times each week might assist in stress relief, recovery, balance, mood, and flexibility. If you try a class and don’t like it, try another one. They are all different.

For those looking to get a grasp on mindful eating habits, meditation, and body awareness, taking yoga 1-2 times each week may help.

Extra credit

“Learning to meditate means taking back control.” Bernard Young (Prisoner in California)

Further resources

Enlighten Up (DVD)

CNN: Man loses 365 pounds with yoga

References

Sherman KJ, et al. Comparison of yoga versus stretching for chronic low back pain: protocol for the Yoga Exercise Self-care (YES) trial. Trials 2006;11:36.

Hartfiel N, et al. The effectiveness of yoga for the improvement of well-being and resilience to stress in the workplace. Scand J Work Environ Health 2010;April 6^th Epub.

Paul P. When yoga hurts. Time 2007;170:71. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1668470,00.html

McDonald AJ 3^rd, et al. US emergency department visits for alcohol-related diseases and injuries between 1992 and 2000. Arch Intern Med 2004;164:531-537.

Corliss R. The power of yoga. 2001;157:54-63. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,999731,00.html

Ornish D, et al. Can lifestyle changes reverse coronary heart disease? The Lifestyle Heart Trial. Lancet 1990;336:129-133.

Manchanda SC, et al. Retardation of coronary atherosclerosis with yoga lifestyle intervention. J Assoc Physicians India 2000;48:687-694.

Telles S, et al. Short term health impact of a yoga and diet change program on obesity. Med Sci Monit 2010;16:CR35-CR40.

Michalsen A, et al. Rapid stress reduction and anxiolysis among distressed women as a consequence of a three-month intensive yoga program. Med Sci Monit 2005;11:CR555-CR561.

Javnbakht M, et al. Effects of yoga on depression and anxiety of women. Complement Ther Clin Pract 2009;15:102-104.

Faturechi R. Jail’s meditation course is not a hard sell. LA Times. April 18^th, 2010. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-jail-meditation18-2010apr18,0,2800953.story?page=1

Vadiraja HS, et al. Effects of a yoga program on cortisol rhythm and mood states in early breast cancer patients undergoing adjuvant radiotherapy: a randomized controlled trial. Integr Cancer Ther 2009;8:37-46.

Oken BS, et al. Randomized, controlled, six-month trial of yoga in healthy senior: effects on cognition and quality of life. Altern Ther Health Med 2006;12:40-47.

Ramaratnam S & Sridharan K. Yoga for epilepsy. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2000;3.

Rajesh B, et al. A pilot study of a yoga meditation protocol for patients with medically refractory epilepsy. J Altern Complement Med 2006;12:367-371.

O’Connor D, et al. Non-surgical treatment (other than steroid injection) for carpal tunnel syndrome. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2003;1.

Bertschinger DR, et al. Yoga can be dangerous – glaucomatous visual field defect worsening due to postural yoga. Br J Opthalmol 2007;91:1413-1414.

Kiecolt-Glaser JK, et al. Stress, inflammation, and yoga practice. Psychosom Med 2010;72:113-121.

Patel SC & Parker DA. Isolated rupture of the lateral collateral ligament during yoga practice: a case report. J Orthop Surg (Hong Kong) 2008;16:378-380.

Schmid AA, et al. Effect of a 12-week yoga intervention on fear of falling and balance in older adults: a pilot study. Arch Phys Med Rehabil 2010;91:576-583.

Dittmann KA & Freedman MR. Body awareness, eating attitudes, and spiritual beliefs of women practicing yoga. Eating Disorders 2009;17:273-292.

Carei TR, et al. Randomized controlled clinical trial of yoga in the treatment of eating disorders. J of Adolescent Health 2010;46:346-351.

Yoga in the modern world. Eds: M. Singleton and J. Byrne. Routledge. 2008.

Scime M, et al. Group prevention of eating disorders with fifth-grade females: impact on body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness, and media influence. Eating Disorders 2006;14:143-155.

McIver S, et al. Yoga as a treatment for binge eating disorder: a preliminary study. Complementary Therapies in Medicine 2009;17:196-202.

Scime M & Cook-Cottone C. Primary prevention of eating disorders: a constructivist integration of mind and body strategies. Int J Eat Disord 2008;41:134-142.

Mitchell KS, et al. Innovative interventions for disordered eating: evaluation dissonance-based and yoga interventions. Int J Eat Disord 2007;40:120-128.

Lundgren T, et al. Acceptance and commitment therapy and yoga for drug-refractory epilepsy: a randomized controlled trial. Epilepsy & Behavior 2008;13:102-108.

McElroy-Cox C. Alternative approaches to epilepsy treatment. Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports 2009;9:313-318.

Boudette R. How can the practice of yoga be helpful in recovery from an eating disorder? Eating Disorders 2006;14:167-170.

Douglass L. Yoga as an intervention in the treatment of eating disorders: does it help? Eating Disorders 2009;17:126-139.

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Umm… what?

Yep, we waste about 20-25% of all food purchased for the home. This equates to about 1.3 pounds of food tossed every day, or 474.5 pounds per year.

Wasting so much food has major consequences for our own and others’ health — including the health of the planet.

“There is a Buddhist concept known as mottainai, which encourages… us to be grateful for the resources we have, to be respectful of them and use them with care. It also calls for us not to waste.” –Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai

What is food waste?

In the developed world, food is treated as a disposable commodity.

While none of us think directly destroying a rainforest is a good idea, throwing away food contributes to just that. If prosperous nations didn’t waste so much food, we could lighten pressure on the world’s remaining natural ecosystems.

Food waste is generally a product of food surplus. Throughout history, humans have disregarded sustainable use of resources when those resources were abundant.

The U.S. has the greatest food surplus of any nation. We have 200% of the energy requirements for an average adult — between 3,500 and 3,900 kcal are available per person. This is more than the average adult requires. Experts suggest that a 130% surplus is enough, which would be about 2,700 kcal for most adults.

So what are we doing with the excess?

We can store it, consume it, or waste it. And we can only store surplus for so long until we must waste it. Today, rich countries channel surplus food supplies into farm animals, trash cans and their own overfat bodies.

Food waste slide show gallery from The Guardian – check out all 18 images.

Why is food waste so important?

There’s a lot of it

In the U.S., where there is a significant food surplus, between 25% and 50% of all food is wasted (depending on sources & estimates).

If 5% of this was recovered, it would represent one day’s worth of food to 4 million people. If 25% was recovered, we are talking enough food to feed 20 million people – that’s the population of Sri Lanka.

For those who slept through geography, this is Sri Lanka

Food waste per person is up 50% since 1974. That’s 1400 calories of food discarded per person each day.

Similarly, in Britain about 20 million tonnes of food waste are created each year.

Other people are hungry

The paradox is that worldwide food insecurity is at an all time high, with nearly 1 billion people hungry. Food prices continue to skyrocket in many regions, and even in affluent North America, there are record numbers of food bank users.

Food waste is unnecessary

40-50% of all food ready for harvest never gets eaten. It might be damaged in transit, discarded due to appearance, not sold at the store, or not eaten at home. If some foods don’t have a certain appearance – including size, shape and color, they are thrown away. So a perfectly good apple might get thrown out because it has a little spot on it.

Fruits and vegetables constitute 28% of this waste from retailers and consumers.

Food waste – apples from farm to you

Food waste costs money

Food waste costs the U.S. $48 billion dollars each year.

Below: You think this is ridiculous? These stats are from 1995. We’ve gotten worse…

Click thumbnail to enlarge

Food waste = wasting other resources

When we buy more food than we are going to eat, the developed world obliterates land and resources that could otherwise be used to feed the worlds deprived. Here’s what else we waste:

• Water: Experts estimate that food waste now accounts for more than one quarter of the total freshwater consumption. Wow. The current rate of wasted food in the world represents a loss of water close to 675 trillion litres. That’s enough for the household needs of 9 billion people using 200 liters per day. For more about water wasting – see All About Drinking Water.
• Other food: 40 to 60% of all fish caught are thrown back. This is known as by-catch. Many of the fish are edible, but haven’t been successfully marketed. For more about fish waste – see All About Eating Seafood.
• Environmental health and fuel: Food waste consumes more than 300 million barrels of oil per year (4% of total U.S. oil consumption). After we throw out food, there are consequences to the environment – organic materials make their way to landfills, decompose, and produce methane – which is a greenhouse gas. About 33% of methane emissions in the U.S. come from landfills. Methane is 20 times more damaging to the environment than carbon dioxide. There is potential for this methane to be used as biogas.

Food waste = other social problems

When we buy food and waste it, this reduces overall supply and drives up food prices. This makes food less affordable for those who are poor and malnourished in other parts of the world. It also creates other problems, as the graphic below shows.

Going to the dogs: food waste and animal feed

Remember mad cow disease? This emerged because manufacturers were using leftover animals in livestock feed — essentially getting herbivores to cannibalize each other.

We raise an animal to eat its meat, but what about livers, kidneys, brains, tongue, feet, etc? For centuries people have found ways to use these products. But now in the affluent world, we use them as ingredients in pet or livestock food.

In the last 30 years, consumption of offal –the viscera and trimmings of a butchered animal often considered inedible by humans — is down by 50%. Essentially, we eat the bits of animals that we like, and toss the rest. News flash: chicken have more than skinless breasts.

Along with “excess” meat, nearly 40% of global grains are fed to farm animals (this is higher in the U.S.). This doesn’t include the other food animals consume.

Worldwide, we give more than 3 times more food to livestock than they give us back in the form of milk, meat, and eggs. Translation: Livestock lose 70% of the calories in the harvests fed to them.

We’re obviously not throwing the food away when it’s fed to farm animals, but it’s inefficient in a world with nearly 7 billion people. The first thing people would probably demand in a global democracy is getting rid of fattened livestock – simply because of this inefficiency.

Delivering animal feed in India... hey, wait a minute, aren't people hungry in India? (And doesn't this transport situation break some law of physics?)

Summary and recommendations

“There are nearly a billion malnourished people in the world, but all of them could be lifted out of hunger with less than a quarter of the food wasted in Europe and North America. In a globalised food system, where we are all buying food in the same international market place, that means we’re taking food out of the mouths of the poor.” –Tristram Stuart

When we address the oversupply of food in the U.S., we can also help to alleviate obesity and environmental burdens. Here are ways that you can get involved and help cut down food waste.

• Figure out the source of your food waste: Do you keep too much food around that goes bad? Should you simply buy less? Maybe that giant “bulk pack” isn’t such a great buy if you don’t actually consume it.
• Examine reuse opportunities: Can you cook the wilted fruits or veggies? (Blackened bananas are perfect for banana muffins, for instance.) Can you make a stew with a leftover stir fry? Can you give food scraps to animals? Can you donate leftovers to food banks or homeless individuals?
• Consider composting: Find out environmentally friendly ways of food disposal.
• Use a shopping list: Find out what you actually have at home. Use leftovers. Buy a small loaf of bread, or buy a big one and freeze what you don’t immediately use. Eat crust – it’s 10% of the loaf. If you don’t like crusts, don’t eat bread. Don’t peel vegetables unless you absolutely must.
• Treat “best by” and “use by” dates with skepticism: Use good judgment. “Sell by” dates can be ignored completely. Be smart with meat consumption – buy from sustainable farms, if at all. Make sure your fridge is between 36 and 40 degrees F (2-4 C).
• Parents: Teach your kids about respecting food and finishing meals. Serve what you actually plan on eating.

Extra credit

While hauling off “separate” food waste can sound like a hassle, consider these examples.

• The Portland International Airport found that it cost them about $82 to have one ton of trash hauled away. Food waste only costs them $48 per ton. They set up separate bins for food waste in 2008 and saved $5,600 in hauling fees alone.
• The University of Dayton got rid of trash cans in their dining halls. Simply getting rid of food trays in college dining halls has cut food waste by about 38% – since people take less and eat what they take.

Food waste campaign flyer (click to enlarge)

When we throw away a single ready-to-eat salad, we forfeit the complete upstream environmental footprint required to produce and deliver that item.

Officials in India complained that not only do Americans eat too much — if they slimmed down to the weight of middle-class Indians, said one, “many people in sub-Saharan Africa would find food on their plate.”

Remember crop gleaning? Some people are back at it: The need to feed hungry families cultivates new interest in gleaning. Also see Not Far From the Tree, an organization in Toronto that gleans surplus fruit from local trees right downtown.

Right now, the U.S. redistributes enough food to feed 26 million people.

“Now food television has a lot of shows about chefs doing fancy things with nice dishes. People think that is what chefs do. But that is not everything. There are lots of things that are not fancy… [Some cooks] waste food. They throw it in the garbage because they don’t know how to cook parts of it, or because they forgot about it in the fridge. They don’t appreciate the ingredients or the process. But vegetables and animals, they are born to be eaten by someone. That is the end of their lives. We have a responsibility to use the whole thing. We have to understand this destiny. A chef in the kitchen has to think very seriously about the food.”
–Chef Daisuke Izutsu of Kaiseki Sakura

Further resources

Wasted Food Blog

Food Waste Tracking Systems

Love Food Hate Waste

Don’t Throw Away That Food

50 Ways To Never Waste Food Again

Have you got a comment on or question about this article? Why not discuss it at the PN Member Zone?

References

Stuart T. Waste: Uncovering the global food scandal. 2009. Norton.

Leonard C. Costs of food waste pile up. Nov 28, 2008. Washington Post.

Shakman A. Food Waste Management – Emerging Trends.

Vaughan A. Elimination of food waste could lift 1 billion out of hunger. Sep 8, 2009.

Love Food Hate Waste.

Half Of U.S. Food Goes To Waste. Food Production Daily. Nov 25, 2004.

Kantor LS, et al. Estimating and Addressing America’s Food Losses. Jan-Apr 1997.

Oliver R. All About: Food Waste. January 22, 2008.

Martin A. One Country’s Table Scraps, Another Country’s Meal. May 18^, 2008.

Britt RR. Americans Toss Out 40 Percent of All Food. Live Science. Nov 26^th 2009.

Hall, Kevin D., et al. The Progressive Increase of Food Waste in America and Its Environmental Impact. PLoS ONE 4(11): e7940. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0007940

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“Use new information about eating disorders very carefully.”

Becoming aware of new information isn’t always a good thing in the world of eating disorders.

Some people learn new things about disordered eating and instead of using it to heal themselves, they add it to their destructive eating arsenal.

If you struggle with disordered eating and you think reading this article offers more risk than benefit, and/or you think this article may trigger problematic behaviour, proceed with caution.

What is disordered eating and when did it start?

Anorexia

“Anorexia” comes from the ancient Greek orexis, or appetite. The prefix “an” denotes “without”; thus “anorexia” is literally “without appetite”.

Now we use the term to describe purposeful non-eating or avoidance of food.

Historical examples

We can track human anorexia back over 11,000 years.

Nomadic foragers migrated from location to location and the biological capacity to suppress hunger may have offered an adaptive advantage.

Modern yogic ascetic, demonstrating imperviousness to cold and hunger in the Himalayas

Fasting days have often been part of religious rituals and processes across cultures. Many traditional indigenous societies include occasional prolonged fasts in order to strengthen their self-discipline and/or achieve spiritual insight.

However, some groups and individuals tried to go without food longer and more frequently. For them, extreme food restriction was part of a daily routine that also included other forms of self-punishment.

The premise was that the body’s needs were somehow immoral and sinful, and thus forcing the body to endure pain, extreme deprivation, and humiliation was a good thing.

For instance, during the medieval period (approx. 5th century CE to late 1500s), early Christian saints often practiced extreme asceticism, refraining from as many fleshly indulgences as possible, and engaging in fasts lasting several days or more.

This extreme food abstinence was linked to other forms of self-punishment in the name of religious devotion. As one source notes regarding medieval asceticism:

The ordinary fasting cycles [of other religions such as Islam and Judaism] did not satisfy the needs of ascetics, who therefore created their own traditions… Manichaean monks won general admiration for the intensity of their fasting achievements. [Early] Christian authors write of their ruthless and unrelenting fasting, and, between their own monks and the Manichaeans, only the Syrian ascetical virtuosos could offer competition in the practice of asceticism. Everything that could reduce sleep and make the resultant short period of rest as troublesome as possible was tried by Syrian ascetics. In their monasteries Syrian monks tied ropes around their abdomens and were then hung in an awkward position, and some were tied to standing posts.

Ascetics would deliberately inflict pain or damage (e.g. looking at the sun until they went blind); live in crude, unpleasant conditions (such as in caves); and generally endure extensive psychological and physical torment. This torment, notes the source:

must be carried out with such ardour that the inner life becomes a burning lava that produces an upheaval of the soul and torment of the heart… Nothing less than extreme self-mortification satisfied the ascetic virtuosos.

Binge eating & purging

Binge eating has been known for thousands of years. Historically it was related to cycles of scarcity and abundance.

Food insecurity can lead to overconsumption in times of plenty.

Like fasting days, many world religions also had feasting days. Among populations accustomed to frequent famines or food shortages, feasting days or times of abundance were undoubtedly a license to over-eat.

Portion of medieval woodcut depicting gluttony. Note that demon-like creatures encourage people to eat -- a medieval understanding of where undesirable behaviours originate.

The modern-day equivalent, now that food is as close as the supermarket, is a cycle of extreme dieting followed by eating to excess. While not all eaters include the extreme dieting — some simply over-eat — a cycle of deprivation followed by over-eating is common.

Humans have also known for millennia about forms of purging — methods of forcing the body to expel what it has consumed. This includes using emetics (substances or methods of inducing vomiting), diuretics (which flush out body water), laxatives, and/or enemas.

"Parsons' Purgative Pills" ad from 1800s

Historically, some regarded purging as a “health promoting” practice.

This was depicted in the novel and film The Road to Wellville, which satirized the 19th-century purging-oriented practices of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (inventor of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes).

Antique French illustration of a "clyster" (enema) machine

Because of the reluctance to associate obesity with disordered eating, it wasn’t until the early 1990s that binge eating was understood to be separate from bulimia.

Modern understandings and diagnoses

The actual “diagnosing” of disordered eating began in the 1870s.

There are two recognized eating disorder diagnoses: anorexia nervosa (AN), which is self starvation, and bulimia nervosa (BN), which is binging and purging.

These diagnoses are incomplete. They reflect only two types of disordered eating, and focus mostly on extreme cases.

They do not encompass the countless individuals who struggle with other disordered eating patterns.

Health professionals can utilize a catchall diagnosis, “Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (EDNOS).” Currently, binge eating disorder (BED) is simply a provisional diagnostic status under EDNOS. When the fifth revision of the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is released in 2011 (or 2012), BED will have its own separate category.

The characteristics of disordered eating are listed below.

Why is disordered eating important?

Clinically defined “eating disorders” of any type are only a small proportion of the rate of disordered eating in the general population. Arguably, “disordered eating” of one kind or another defines the lives of many people in modern society.

A poll of 10,000 readers in a popular teen magazine revealed that:

• 30% would rather be thin than healthy
• 50% of the women between the ages of 18 and 25 said they would prefer to be run over by a truck than be fat
• 66% would rather be “mean” or “stupid” instead of fat

Individuals who watch TV three or more nights per week are 50% more likely than non-watchers to feel “too big” or “too fat.”

This negative self image and intense fear of gaining body fat can lead to dieting. Nearly 25% of those who diet will develop partial or full syndrome eating disorders.

Yet the National Institute of Mental Health spends less money on eating disorder research than any other condition it handles.

Research funding per case equates to:

• $0.74 cents for eating disorders
• $34.07 for autism
• $37.78 for bipolar disorder

How common are eating disorders?

In short, we don’t know. We can only guess.

Since doctors have no requirement to report eating disorders to health agencies, and since most people who suffer disordered eating never seek treatment, it’s hard to get accurate statistics.

Furthermore, extrapolating eating disorder statistics to the general population is tricky. Not all patients are captured in a clinical setting, and the ones that do seek help don’t always fall into a specific category.

Indeed, a recent study suggests that mental health disorders — which can include disordered eating — may be more common than we realize.

If we factor in the broad range of behaviours that make up disordered eating, the prevalence of disordered eating is thus probably quite high.

One estimate (see graphic below) indicates that only 1 in 10 people with eating disorders seek treatment.

Eating disorder facts (click to enlarge)

The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders states that approximately 8 million people in the U.S. have AN, BN, and related eating disorders. This means 3 of every 100 people eat in a disordered way.

Who is at risk?

About 1% of female adolescents have AN. Nearly 4% of college-aged women have BN. Data has indicated that almost 1/3 of female athletes may struggle with disordered eating.

For every 4 females with AN, there is one male. For every 8 to 11 females with BN, there is one male. Some studies indicate that up to 25% of adults with eating disorders are male.

Eating disorders used to be considered a “female problem”; however, males are increasingly affected, particularly as cultural norms shift to feature more and more lean and muscular male bodies in mass media. Some researchers have suggested, for instance, that “bigorexia”, or the perception that one’s body is too scrawny, may underlie many male bodybuilders’ quest for muscularity.

Nearly 90% of those with eating disorders report onset of illness by the age of 20 and the primary age groups affected are the teens and twenties. Yet increasingly, older people are reporting disordered eating.

All segments of society are affected by disordered eating: men and women, young and old, rich and poor, all ethnicities, and all socio-economic levels.

However, research suggests that worldwide, it’s the upper social classes of industrialized countries, particularly in Western countries but increasingly in Asian countries such as Japan who are most affected by disorders of food restriction and extreme dieting.

Studies have also found that even in regions and among ethnic groups that value plumpness, disordered eating is emerging.

One of the groups newly affected by disordered eating, for example, appears to be young women of Arab and South Asian origin now living in Western countries. One study remarks that this group is now vulnerable because these girls simultaneously experience the conflicting and multiple pressures of Western body-shape ideals, traditional family and cultural expectations, and the challenges of fitting in to a new society.

What you should know about disordered eating

Disordered eating is a complicated phenomenon. It should be viewed as a set of behaviours and experiences rather than a specific, narrowly defined medical condition.

While there are some features that these behaviours and experiences may share, people’s individual situations can vary widely.

Eating disorders can develop from various factors, including:

• Family struggles
• Genetics
• Impaired body image
• Ineffective coping strategies
• Low self-esteem
• No feeling of personal identify
• Lack of perceived control

Physiological & psychological explanations

The exact origins of disordered eating are still unclear.

Some experts claim that genetics play a significant role in eating disorders. Those with a mother or sister who had AN are 12 times more likely than others with no family history of that disorder to develop it themselves. However, it’s not clear whether genetics is responsible, or whether the disordered eater is simply mimicking the behaviour and attitudes of other family members (or both).

Others argue that eating disorders might actually be due to underlying metabolic or digestive tract disorders.

It’s been suggested that those with AN have serotonin overactivity, leading to exaggerated satiety. They might also have excess activity in the brain’s dopamine receptors, leading to a drive for weight loss, but no pleasure from shedding the weight. Over-eaters may also have some disruption of dopamine, which is known to stimulate the body’s “wanting” response, or under-active satiety mechanisms.

Strict dieting and the inability to adjust to environmental stressors are two critical initiators for developing an eating disorder.

Restriction of food can cause food preoccupation, as any strict dieter can attest.

And food can become “drug-like” for those struggling to cope with stress. Some evidence links anxiety and depression with disordered eating.

Some have even suggested that disordered eating is not a “disorder” at all but simply the body’s “normal” attempt to cope with “abnormal” situations of modern stresses, cultural ideals, and food availability. In this model, disordered eating is actually a “mismatch” between Paleolithic physiology/psychology and modern lifestyle demands.

No single cause

What seems clear is that disordered eating can have many, interlocking, causes and manifestations. It’s a set of complex behaviours and experiences that can not and should not be over-simplified.

Cyclical nature

Disordered eating can often be cyclical.

Eaters may have disordered eating thoughts and behaviours daily, every few days, every few weeks, or even infrequently throughout their lives.

Some disordered eating appears during periods of stress and/or life transitions, then disappears again for a while when things settle down. These periods can include things like:

• adolescence
• midlife
• periods when identity or lifestyle changes (e.g. loss of a job, financial troubles, transition into parenthood, etc.)
• stressful interpersonal events (e.g. death of a loved one or relationship problems, etc.)
• etc.

Other disordered eating may follow a daily or regular routine (e.g. fasting all day followed by an evening binge; extreme dieting during the week followed by a weekend binge then a Monday morning purge, etc.).

Cycle of disordered eating (click to enlarge)

Eating disorder types

Again, bear in mind that these are collections of symptoms that have been given a clinical label. Not everyone with disordered eating will fall neatly into these categories.

Many people will have a unique set of behaviours from all of these lists of symptoms, and the symptoms may change over time or with the situation.

In all cases, however, there are physical, psychological, behavioural, and lifestyle causes and consequences.

Anorexia nervosa

Characteristics

• Disturbed sense of body image
• Refusal to maintain a minimally normal body weight
• In women, amenorrhea (from food restriction)
• The individual will severely reject food, causing extreme weight loss, depressed metabolism and fatigue
• Weight loss
• Intense fear of weight gain
• Preoccupation with low calorie/sugar/fat foods
• Specific eating rituals and habits
• Excessive exercise
• Social/emotional withdrawal

Causes

AN can have causes rooting from biological, psychological and/or socio-cultural origin. There is a possible genetic link.

Individuals who develop AN may have psychological and emotional characteristics that contribute to its development, including low self worth or obsessive compulsive personality traits.

The Western culture cultivates the desire for thinness and muscularity.

Peer pressure and sports may also promote the desire to alter one’s body.

Anorexia athletica is the development of anorexia-like symptoms and behaviours in athletes. See below for more.

Consequences

AN has the highest death rate of any mental illness, with a mortality rate of between 6% and 20%. Other consequences include anemia, lung problems, dehydration, bone loss and fractures, abnormal heart rhythms, heart failure, amenorrhea, hypogonadism, constipation, nausea, electrolyte abnormalities and kidney problems.

Bulimia

Characteristics

• Recurring episodes of binge eating during which the person consumes large amounts of food and feels unable to stop eating, followed by inappropriate compensatory efforts to avoid weight gain, such as self-induced vomiting, laxative or diuretic abuse, vigorous exercise, or fasting
• Using food (either overeating or purging) as a major coping mechanism
• Patients are steadily and overly apprehensive about body shape and weight
• Patients are more likely to experience loneliness, irritability, passivity, sadness, and suicidal behavior

Causes

Those with bulimia are usually of normal weight status and tend to be well-educated.

Overweight parents (often mothers) sometimes teach their children to use food as a stress coping mechanism, or as a reward/punishment.

Codependency can be present, which is a dysfunctional pattern of relating to one’s own feelings, focusing on others or on things outside of themselves. Admission and guilt tend to be more common among patients with bulimia.

Biological causes have been suggested, e.g. disorders of neurotransmitters associated with reward, satiety and anxiety, such as dopamine and serotonin.

Consequences

Vomiting can lead to erosion of dental enamel, mucosal trauma from stomach acids, gingival recession, dental caries, dry mouth and salivary gland enlargement (a puffy face is common).

Fluid and electrolyte disturbances can occur, notably low blood potassium (which causes heart arrhythmias).

After a binge, the stomach can rupture or the esophagus can tear. This is often fatal. On a lesser scale, there may be damage to the esophageal sphincter that regulates food transport between esophagus and stomach, which can lead to gastro-esophageal reflux disease (GERD).

Binge episodes increase gastric capacity, delay gastric emptying, blunt hormone release from the stomach and impair satiety response.

How bulimia affects your body (click to enlarge)

Binge eating

Characteristics

• Binging not followed with purging
• Binging consists of recurrent eating episodes that involve either eating more rapidly than normal, eating until uncomfortable, eating when not physically hungry, eating and then feeling disgusted/guilty/depressed
• Eaters often report “cognitive dissociation”, or the feeling that they are on “autopilot” while binging, and oblivious to pleas from part of their brain to stop
• BED is four times more common and persists longer than AN and BN
• While binging on high-fat/high-sugar foods is common, bingers may also consume less-appetizing foods such as food that is still frozen, food from other people’s plates, or even foods out of the garbage

Causes

Binge eating contributes to excessive calorie intake and is most common in obese persons. The onset is usually beyond teen years.

Individuals with this disorder tend to be distressed by it, with depression being a common symptom. Researchers have begun to classify BED as a “major public health burden.”

Chronic dieting may predispose binge eating.

Depression is not only a symptom but a common antecedent.

More than 25% of patients in weight control programs binge at least twice per month. Many times, a history of parental or personal alcohol abuse is noticed. Other traumatic events, years of unusual stress, or mood disorders can also be involved.

Consequences

The physical outcomes of BED include diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and other health ailments.

After a binge, the stomach can rupture or the esophagus can tear. This is often fatal. Binge eaters are also more prone to gastro-esophageal reflux (GERD) and other GI disorders, due to the volume and speed of consumption.

Psychologically, bingers often experience depression, since many people are always struggling to reduce body weight. They may become anxious in anticipation of upcoming

Thus, lifelong weight cycling and psychological distress are typical when the disorder is uncontrolled.

Anorexia athletica

There are two related forms of anorexia athletica. One is defined by the use of excessive exercise to maintain body weight; the other is defined by disordered eating among recreational and competitive athletes.

In both cases, exercise is usually part of a general attempt to control body size/weight, or a precipitating factor in disordered eating behaviours.

Characteristics

• When an individual no longer chooses to exercise but feels compelled to do so
• Often, exercise in excessive amounts, especially exercise that is associated with weight loss (e.g. several hours of cardio a day)
• The patient will struggle with guilt and/or anxiety if they do not exercise
• Use of excessive exercise, usually along with dietary restriction, to maintain a low body weight/fat
• Excessive exercise may follow a similar cycle as binge-purge, with exercise following a binge episode

Causes

Exercise anorexia is a compulsive behaviour and many individuals do it to gain more control over their lives. It can be provoked by dieting at an early age, comments about body shape by a professional/coach and sport specific training.

Athletes engaging in team sports and sports/physical activities that emphasize either weight classes or body image (e.g. wrestling, swimming, dance) are most vulnerable, particularly if parents, coaches, or peers are focused on weight or body size.

Consequences

The health outcomes include dry hair, dry skin, hair loss, digestive difficulties, slowed heart rate, low blood pressure, dehydration, kidney problems, insomnia, joint weakness, suppressed immune function, and nutrient deficiencies.

Athletic performance is eventually also affected, as athletes may suffer recurring injuries and illnesses, cognitive impairments, and poor recovery from training.

Prevention and treatment of eating disorders

Depending on the severity and duration of the eating disorder, treatment varies.

Generally, however, treatment should be multi-factorial and address physical, psychological, and lifestyle factors.

With advanced AN, treatment typically has two phases:

• Phase 1: A short-term intervention to restore body weight and prevent death.
• Phase 2: A long-term therapy to improve psychological functioning and prevent relapse. Tube feedings are sometimes necessary.

Usually, a team approach is utilized with a physician, nurse, dietitian and psychiatrist.

Two approaches for BN treatment are psychotherapy and antidepressant medications. Sessions can be done over a 6 month period and the antidepressants can be helpful for long-term results.

No standard treatments are involved with BED and exercise anorexia. Conventional weight management programs or professional counseling may be involved. The treatment method is determined by the patient.

Summary and recommendations

“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

As with other types of addictions, there’s not much anybody can do until the person with the disordered eating wants to change.

Confrontation and harassing generally don’t help. Nor does well-meaning advice such as “Get over it” or “You should love your body”.

One of the best things to say to someone you suspect has disordered eating patterns is:

“Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.”

Direct statements or judgments about body size or eating habits will most likely elicit resistance.

If you are concerned about your own eating patterns, and suspect they are disordered, we suggest seeking out resources to assist in recovery.

Strict dieting will likely create further problems. Remember, the disorder probably extends beyond food.

Find books, a counselor and/or a support group that can assist you in making a recovery. It’s tough, but it’s worth it.

Further resources

Intuitive Eating

Books by Victoria Moran

Eating Mindfully

Breaking out of food jail

Overeaters Anonymous

NationalEatingDisorders.org

Extra credit

Inpatient treatment for disordered eating can reach $30,000 per month.

Stress can trigger binge eating.

No medications appear to be effective for treating AN. Medications may be useful for BN and BED. Behavioral therapy seems to be the most effective option.

Some data has indicated that vegetarian adolescents may be more likely to display disordered eating attitudes and behaviors than non-vegetarians.

Besides the obvious repercussions of disordered eating, other scary stuff can happen. Check out this case report from 2008:

A 24 year old female with a history of BN and vomiting came to the emergency room with marked abdominal distension. Her stomach had ruptured. A large nasogastric tube was inserted and 9 liters of viscous gastric contents were drained out. Three months later she experienced paralysis on her right side and loss of language skills. She had experienced a brain hemorrhage due to bacteria spreading from the stomach rupture.

Matsuyama T, et al. Acute gastric dilatation causing bacterial cerebral aneurysm-case report. Int J Eat Disord 2008 Jan (epub).

References

Encyclopedia Britannica. Entry for “asceticism”. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/37864/asceticism/433/Forms-of-religious-asceticism

Silverstein A, Silverstein V, Silverstein Nunn L. The Eating Disorders Update. 2009. Enslow Publishers, Inc.

Wagner V. Eating Disorders – Opposing Viewpoints. 2007. Greenhaven Press.

National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders http://www.anad.org/2901.html

Shuriquie, N. Eating disorders: a transcultural perspective. Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal 5 no.2 (1999): 354-360.

Pecina S, et al. Nucleus accumbens corticotrophin-releasing factor increases cue-triggered motivation for sucrose reward: paradoxical positive incentive effects in stress? 2006;4:8-24.

Gordon RA. Eating Disorders: Anatomy of a social epidemic. Blackwell Publishers. 2000.

Berman ND, et al. Management of eating disorders. 2006. http://www.ahrq.gov/downloads/pub/evidence/pdf/eatingdisorders/eatdis.pdf

Robinson-O’Brien R, et al. Adolescent and Young Adult Vegetarianism: Better Dietary Intake and Weight Outcomes but Increased Risk of Disordered Eating Behaviors. J Am Diet Assoc 2009;109:648-655.

Advanced Nutrition and Human Metabolism, 3^rd Edition. Groff JL, Gropper SS. 1999. Delmar Publishers, Inc.

Anatomy & Physiology, 4^th Edition. Thibodeau GA, Patton KT. 1999. Mosby, Inc.

Food, Nutrition & Diet Therapy, 11^th Edition. Mahan LK, Escott-Stump S. 2004. Saunders.

Nutrition and Diagnosis-Related Care, 5^th Edition. Escott-Stump S. 2002. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

The Merck Manual, 17^th Edition. Beers MH, Berkow R. 1999. Merck Research Laboratories.

Barnard ND, Weissenger R, Jaster B, Kahan S. Ed: C. Smyth. Nutrition Guide for Clinicians. 1st ed. PCRM. 2007.

National Eating Disorders – Statistics. Available online at: http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/ Accessed 6/25/09.

Click here to join the waiting list.

As the meeting began and lunch was served, hungry grad students swarmed the food table. I observed what appeared to be a lean, healthy and fit female grad student approaching the table. She selected a good sized veggie sandwich and two pieces of fruit.

Her friend, who followed behind her in line, appeared to be overweight, unhealthy and un-fit. Her friend moved through the food line and selected a lunch that consisted of diet Coke and a cookie.

Who cares, you say? Shouldn’t people be allowed to pick whatever they want for lunch?

The dietary displacement gods care and you probably should too. These daily choices can help explain why humans might be getting fatter and more unfit.

What is dietary displacement?

"I'm saving all my love for yoooo..."

Negative dietary displacement

Have you ever known someone who skips out on a salad with greens, tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, beans, sunflower seeds and flax vinaigrette in order to budget their calories for the scone and Frappucino splurge at Starbucks later that evening?

Welcome to the land of negative dietary displacement. It’s when someone skips out on healthy eats and displaces them with non-nutritious foods.

But even with this displacement, who really cares? I mean, as long as calories are balanced we’ll be just fine, right?

Not necessarily. Negative dietary displacement generally leads to:

• rebound over-eating
• lack of satiety
• atrocious nutrient intake
• loss of muscle mass
• low energy levels
• increased body fat

In other words, you feel crummy, you don’t look your best, and on top of that — you’re still hungry! Bummer.

Positive dietary displacement

On the flip side, have you ever known someone who skips out on the massive dessert brownie, or only has a small piece, because they are satisfied from a nutritious meal of whole, real foods?

This is positive dietary displacement: when someone eats enough nutritious food each day, leaving little or no room for the non-nutritious foods.

When people eat this way, it generally leads to:

• consuming the right amount of food for your energy needs
• satiation after meals
• a stellar nutrient intake
• lean muscle development
• high energy levels
• lower levels of body fat

Unlike the negative dietary displacement, you feel good, you look good, and your tummy is happy. Sign me up.

Why is dietary displacement so important?

When individuals are trying to eat healthier, they tend to focus their efforts on what they should be cutting out and restricting.

But what does that really accomplish? Shouldn’t they worry about how in the heck they’re going to eat enough healthy food over the next 24 hours? That’s usually difficult enough.

Humans usually eat about 3-4 pounds of food per day. If we add in enough healthy foods, we won’t have much room left for unhealthy foods. We can use this to our advantage.

Similarly, if you fill your day with activities related to a rewarding career, enriching relationships with family/friends, and personal well-being, there isn’t much of an opportunity left to engage in cigar smoking, strip clubbing, and Internet flame wars.

All calories are not created equal

We all know by now that industrialized populations are getting fatter. This can make us fixate on meeting a daily calorie quota. We worry about daily numerical goals instead of food’s quality — about how much we eat, rather than what we eat or how our food contributes to keeping us healthy.

If someone saves their goal number of calories to dine on Hot Pockets, mochaccinos and candy, that’s poor nutrition. But people do this because they realize they only have a limited number of eating opportunities each day. They might not want to “waste” these eating opportunities on foods that don’t taste as good as the Hot Pockets, mochaccinos and candy they crave.

However, a candy calorie is much different than a kale calorie. “Non-food” calories are more likely to be stored as fat, degrade health, lead to further hunger, lead to further food preoccupation, and low energy levels.

Can you spot the difference? Your brain and body sure as heck can.

What you should know about dietary displacement

A rigorous calorie tally can backfire in more ways than one.

Most people generally know that eating too much each day will cause body fat gains and health problems. When people get too wrapped up in the numbers, they feel like they must save up for the tasty (read: overly stimulating) edible food-like substances. And this is where most dietary displacement originates from. You know, the land of counting points, calories and grams.

Awareness of calories = probably good. Detailed calorie counting = probably not so good.

Appetite

It’s interesting to note that one of the most important factors related to dietary displacement (and nutrition success) lies just beyond our direct dietary control. This factor is appetite.

Most people feel as if they have no control over their appetite. So they either ignore it (which never works in the long-run, even for veterans of the physique world) or they try to find a magic supplement that helps control it (yes, people still do that).

But we all have some control over our appetite. You see, appetite isn’t primarily controlled by the number of calories we eat. Rather, it’s controlled by the volume of food that we eat.

Simply put, our appetite is based on how much total food volume passes through our digestive tract.

If a lot of food volume passes through, we’re satisfied.

If very little passes through, we’re hungry (note: this is in regard to true physiological hunger, not “head hunger.” “Head hunger” is when someone eats for reasons other than physiological hunger; “head hunger” is insatiable with food/drink).

Therefore, the volume/weight of foods seems to be more important than the calorie content in terms of keeping us fuller for longer during the day.

So, if you consume 3-4 lbs of scones, candy and Frappucinos each day, you could easily rack up a lot of extra calories that’ll need to be stored somewhere. On the other hand, you could eat 3-4 lbs of nutritious, whole food that easily keeps you full but promotes health and fat loss at the same time.

“But I’m never full!”

If you often grumble about not being full or always being hungry, you may have beachfront property in the world of negative dietary displacement. Are you relying on fake foods to meet your nutrient and satiety needs?

Here is an example of how some of these foods differ.

Each comparison pair has the same amount of calories, but provides much different volumes and nutrients.

Play spot the difference again! (Take your time with this one. It’s tougher — they’re shaped the same.)

Summary and recommendations

Are you eating 90% nutritious, unprocessed food and 10% treats or vice versa? Are you displacing healthy foods with unhealthy alternatives?

How’s that working for you?

If we focus on first eating the nutritious foods that our bodies need to feel energized, fight disease, be lean and be healthy, followed by simply enjoying a treat here and there, we’d be much better off.

However, many people don’t eat any of the nutritious stuff. They go right for the treat foods.

If we skip breakfast, get really hungry, and then pick up candy, chips and soda at the gas station – we’ll have a candy, chip and soda body to show for it. However, if we first ate real, nutritious food and then enjoyed a treat, we’d be able to regulate our appetite and make smart decisions.

It’s time to start displacing the poorer food selections from your menu with better ones — instead of the opposite. Eat enough nutritious stuff first. And if you desire a less-than-nutritious food option, have the nutritious one beforehand, and then see how you feel.

Further resources

Defeating Dietary Displacement Part 1

Defeating Dietary Displacement Part 2

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Timlin MT, Pereira MA. Breakfast frequency and quality in the etiology of adult obesity and chronic disease. Nutr Rev 2007:65;268-281.

Stubbs RJ, van Wyk MC, Johnstone AM, Harbron CG. Breakfasts high in protein, fat or carbohydrate: Effect on within-day appetite and energy balance. Eur J Clin Nutr 1996;50:409-417.

Otsuka R, Tamakoshi K, Yatsuya H, Murata C, Sekiya A, Wada K, Zhang HM, Matsushita K, Sugiura K, Takefuji S, OuYang P Nagasawa N, Kondo T, Sasaki S, Toyoshima H. Eating fast leads to obesity: findings based on self-administered questionnaires among middle-aged Japanese men and women. J Epidemiol 2006;16:117-124.

Hulshof T, De Graaf C, Weststrate JA. The effects of preloads varying in physical state and fat content on satiety and energy intake. Appetite 1993;21:273-286.

Tordoff MG, Alleva AM. Effect of drinking soda sweetened with aspartame or high fructose corn syrup on food intake and body weight. Am J Clin Nutr 1990;51:963-969.

Raben A, Vasilaras TH, Moller AC, Astrup A. Sucrose compared with artificial sweeteners: different effects on ad libitum food intake and body weight after 10 wk of supplementation in overweight subjects. Am J Clin Nutr 2002;76:721-729.

Malik VS, Schulze MB, Hu FB. Intake of sugar-sweetened beverages and weight gain: a systematic review. Am J Clin Nutr 2006;84:274–288.

Elfhag K, Tynelius P, Rasmussen F. Sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened soft drinks in association to restrained, external and emotional eating. Physiol Behav 2007;91:191-195.

Poortinga W. Perceptions of the environment, physical activity, and obesity. Soc Sci Med 2006;63:2835-2846.

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This test consists of two questions:

Question #1: When you look in the mirror, are you pleased with your level of muscularity and leanness? Also, are you happy with your energy and health? (OK, we sneaked one more question in here.)

Question #2: If no, have you followed a nutritional plan conforming to PN instruction, day in and day out for at least 5 weeks, with no more than 10% of your meals falling outside of those criteria?

Think about these questions before you answer.

The first questions above are outcome based: What happened? (Or didn’t?)

The second question above is behaviour-based: What did you do? (Or not?)

Asking (and answering) both outcome- and behaviour-based questions is essential for progress.

Why measuring compliance is so important

It’s easy to get wrapped up in so-called nutritional “do’s” and “don’ts”. But they don’t really matter — well, at least until you test them on yourself.

Many people will blindly cling to a nutrition tidbit without ever having tested it on themselves. Or they’ll decide that something works or doesn’t work without actually having good evidence.

Someone says, “Carbs make me fat!” However, do these people really have a clear definition of a “carb?” Have they tested out eating different sources of unprocessed carbs? And have they stopped short of being absolutely stuffed when eating carb dense foods? Without this information, we have no feedback. They want to change their behaviour but don’t have the evidence to do it.

Or perhaps someone will say, “Carbs make me fat!” And maybe carbs — especially simple, processed carbs — really do make that person fat. Turns out that’s a pretty good educated guess. Except that person doesn’t actually do anything about it. Most of the time, they don’t actually avoid eating a lot of simple, processed carbs. Their behaviour doesn’t match their evidence.

Think about this. If you had a set of directions for constructing a desk and you only followed 50% of the instructions, who do you blame when the desk falls apart? The instructions? Or yourself?

(If you’re an instruction-blamer, you may be wondering why your body composition isn’t where it should be. Time to rethink your attitude.)

This is what measuring compliance is all about. Until you measure your compliance against set eating “directions” — unless you actually, measurably, follow directions as specified — leave me alone. I need to get back to my Justin Timberlake scrapbook.

What happens when we don't learn from experience

What you should know about measuring compliance

If you’re to succeed in any endeavour, and have a specific goal you want to achieve, you must be able to measure your progress and the outcome of your efforts. The things you measure should be specific and diverse — robust, if you will.

If you’re a patient person and simply want to look and feel better, your measures can be less specific. You can take your time. Start eating better, one step at a time. Simply do things you know will help you reach your goals. Kick back, ignore the scale, ignore the calipers, and just live the life. Just stop once and a while and rate how you look and/or feel.

If you are impatient and want to lose X amount of body fat by X date, break out the notebook and track body weight, skinfolds, girths, and photos on a regular basis. This is how you’ll know if you’re on track. And, with this information, you’ll know whether you need to keep doing what you’re doing or whether you need to make some modifications.

In the end, it’s up to you. Based on your goals and what you want to accomplish, you can be an aggressive outcomes-based decision maker. Or a less aggressive one.

Either way, you should pick some outcomes, pick your measurement intervals, and make your decisions based on these outcomes.

There’s no shame in admitting that you are unwilling to do what it takes to shape the best plan for you. The only shame lies in trying to convince yourself that you’re doing everything it takes when you’re not coming close.

How to measure compliance

If you have a PN binder, you can make copies of the PN Compliance worksheets, found in the Individualization Guide. If not, you can develop your own or use this Excel spreadsheet. Next, start measuring your compliance.

Here’s how it works:

1) Each time you eat a meal designated for that time slot, you get to put an “x” in the box.

2) Each time you miss a meal, put a 0 in the box.

3) Each time you eat a non-compliant meal, put an * in the box. A “miss” is whatever you define it as. It could be eating refined carbs with a meal, eating fast food, drinking calories, not listening to hunger cues, etc. Or it can be anything that isn’t on par with the 10 PN habits. There’s some gray area here. But you’ll know a miss when you see it.

At the end of each week, evaluate your success. Simply tally up the total meals scheduled for the week and subtract the boxes that are either blank or contain a star.

In this case, out of 6 possible meals x 7 days, 7 meals were missed, and 4 were noncompliant. 11/42 = 26%, which means that 74% of meals were compliant and properly administered. Not bad, but could be better.

You can use the compliance checklist for any facet of your nutrition.

Is your goal to:

• eat only local food 5 days each week?
• eat plant-based meals for all but one meal a day?
• take fish oil twice a day?

Simply measure your compliance to whatever criteria you set out for yourself, then evaluate your strategy. Consider performance and health goals too. Maybe your only goal is to have more energy each day and sleep better at night. Maybe you want to lower your LDL levels for your annual physical exam.

Now what?

There are two possible outcomes of your “measuring compliance” experiment:

1. You got the results you wanted.

2. You didn’t get the results you wanted.

(Stop me if this is too complicated.)

If your controlled experiment (i.e., your nutritional plan) yielded the first outcome — the results you wanted — keep at it. If you wish to maintain or improve any of those results, you can simply continue the plan as-is until it stops working.

If your plan yielded the second outcome – less than expected results – then you must change something.

There are three possible explanations for less than expected results:

Explanation #1: Unrealistic results

Maybe 12 weeks to prepare for your first Mr. Olympia or NFL combine wasn’t quite enough. Or maybe it’s never going to happen, no matter what. We love ambitious goals at PN, but not goals that are unrealistically ambitious.

Losing 10 pounds of fat, gaining 10 pounds of muscle, lifting 10 more pounds, or finishing the race in 10 fewer seconds over the course of two weeks is unrealistic. I think we’d all agree.

Strangely, many want to believe these results are probable. This is due to societal norms, the media, and advertising. Feel free to continue this “blame fest,” but the important thing is that you now start accepting reality.

Things are more difficult than we think they’ll be and take longer than we think they’ll take. Welcome to life.

Thus as you evaluate goals, determine your upper level of achievement — the level you could achieve if everything went darn near perfect.

Then, consider rate of achievement. This is how long it will take to you to reach your goals if everything is dialed in.

You can figure this out based on observations. Ask others who’ve achieved similar goals how long it took them and what level of dedication/effort was required. Take an average, don’t just ask the most elite person you know and base your progress on that. Find several people.

One of our favorite principles of improvement is continually trying to improve yourself over time (a principle well-known to Japanese business as kaizen). This continuous improvement can be small or big. The key is that it’s continual, and it’s based on only bettering yourself.

Here’s a key point: You are not inferior. You are not superior. You are simply “you”. Getting “better” is relative to you.

To wrap up explanation #1, you should choose a goal. Select a measure that enables you to track your progress toward that goal. Set your expectations, both upper limit and rate of achievement. Then consider the idea of trying to simply progress by the minimum measurable increment every two weeks.

Oh yeah, and consider building in a “buffer zone” or backup plans, because you should know from experience that life isn’t darn near perfect.

Explanation #2: Expectations were realistic, but execution wasn’t up to the task

Less than 90% adherence means poor control. This means inaccurate data on your food intake. Variables lack control and we don’t know what works and what doesn’t work. Uh oh.

Before you actually start making changes to your nutritional intake, you have to adhere to a habitual food intake. You have to be compliant enough to know whether the plan needs changes or you need changes.

If the plan is too radical for you to stick with, then that tells you something. Maybe efforts need to be scaled back and more achievable goals should be set.

Or maybe you never need to measure compliance. Maybe you stick to the basic PN principles of eating and exercise, and that leads you to your goals. Then you’re set.

Explanation #3: Realistic expectations, and execution up to task, but your plan was inadequate

Don’t abandon your plan entirely. If it was based on PN principles, assume it was mostly accurate. All you have to do is tweak as necessary. Learn more about tweaking your plan with our full selection of All About articles.

Whether you're aggressive or not, in the end it’s about healthy habits

Summary and recommendations

If you aren’t meeting your health and body composition goals, try measuring your eating compliance against set criteria. Make sure to measure outcomes as well.

After measuring your compliance and outcome measures, figure out if you’ve met your goals.

If so, keep it up. If not, review one of the three possible explanations (above) and begin tweaking from there.

Further resources

Tailor Made Nutrition series

Tailor Made Nutrition 1

Tailor Made Nutrition 2

Tailor Made Nutrition 3

Click here to join the waiting list.

One of the top contenders for “worst nutrition cliché” has got to be: “Always eat breakfast.” Lame.

If someone takes the aforementioned advice and stockpiles donuts, sausage biscuits, Go-Gurts, and/or Pop-Tarts for breakfast – they’re way off. They’d probably be better off passing on meal #1 and hoping the PN fairy grants them good sense by the time lunch rolls around.

Step 1: Eat Go-Gurt; Step 2: Put on 3-D glasses; Step 3: Watch body get fat and unhealthy. You can really see that belly coming right out of the mirror at you!

However, when we venture to the land of “nutritious breakfasts” – over time, we might notice:

• Less body fat
• Less chronic, non-communicable disease
• Improved learning/retention
• Improved mood
• Better food choices later in the day
• Improved energy
• Muscle preservation
• Increased strength
• Lower cholesterol
• Improved bowel movements
• Balanced blood sugars

Translation: A nutritious breakfast is probably a good idea.

What you should know about breakfast

But what are healthy people eating for breakfast? Isn’t that the type of meal we should be mimicking? Well, certainly they’re not noshing the Denny’s Grand Slam or mom’s timeless scrapple recipe.

Breakfast is a near disaster in North America as many people base their selection on convenience and stimulation rather than nutrition and how they feel afterwards.

In America, the average adult spends 32 minutes each day on food prep and clean up. Divide that by 3 meals, and it means about 10.7 minutes are dedicated to breakfast. Worse yet, the average college male will dedicate less than 7 minutes to the first meal of the day. (And it’s often cold pizza from a box he found on the beer-bottle-littered floor.) That’s barely enough time to microwave a “Bagel-ful.”

If you only have 3 minutes to heat up a Bagel-ful, and can’t quite squeeze in 4 minutes to make a super shake from Gourmet Nutrition, you might need to clear your schedule.

The ultimate in prefab nonfood - for those folks too busy to spend 3 seconds spreading cream cheese

Sure, it looks delicious and healthy, but hey man! I ain't got time to throw fruit in a blender and press "ON"! Gimme that white flour bagel stuffed with type 2 diabetes instead!

You’ll find that most of the meals healthy people are eating require more than a few minutes (unless it’s prepared ahead of time). Accept it.

If you’re too busy to eat a nutritious breakfast, you’re too busy to be lean and healthy. And while some people intentionally skip breakfast to drop body fat, it doesn’t seem to work in the long run, as those who skip are up to 5 times more likely to be obese than those who make it a daily habit.

Nearly 90% of Americans acknowledge that breakfast is a good idea, still, about half don’t eat it.

And of those eating it, what are they choosing? When I last checked, sales for the fast-food breakfast market reached about $31 billion in 2005, so I’m guessing that people aren’t choosing healthy stuff.

When people eat breakfast at home, the most popular items include:

• Ready to eat cereals
• Cow’s milk
• Coffee

When people eat breakfast away from home, the most popular items include:

• Eggs
• Bacon
• Sausage
• Pastries
• Coffee
• Bagels

Who usually skips meal #1 altogether in North America?

• Those between the ages of 12 and 29
• African Americans
• Low income families

What are healthy people eating for breakfast?

At PN we’ve long encouraged “thinking outside of the donut box” for breakfast. You’ll see that the healthiest nations do too. Developing breakfast habits might be critical, as nearly half of the people that eat breakfast each day claim that their choice is driven by routine.

We’ll highlight some of the healthiest nations and what they choose for breakfast. Among them are the leanest, longest lived, least depressed, lowest cancer rates, lowest heart disease rates and best digestive health. As you read thorough the options, notice similarities and differences, then consider how your choices compare.

Keep in mind that some of the breakfast meals we outline below would be slightly different depending on the region of the country, income, traditions, etc. Still, it gives you an idea what people are eating in other, healthier parts of the world for breakfast.

Okinawa

• Longest life expectancy on the planet
• Low levels of various chronic diseases
• Active into old age

Typical breakfast selections:

• Steamed rice, rice porridge, rice cakes
• Seaweed & sea vegetables
• Green tea
• Miso & noodle soup
• Veggie stir-fry
• Tofu
• Broiled/grilled fish
• Eggs

Examples:

Brown rice porridge with fruit	Simple miso soup
Rolled veggie omelet	Soba noodle soup

Iceland

Low levels of depression, bipolar disorder, seasonal affective disorder and post-partum depression despite long winters and little sunlight.

Typical breakfast selections:

• Whole grains (focusing on rye and oatmeal)
• Skyr/yogurt
• Bilberries and other fruits
• Meats
• Cheese
• Fish
• Eggs

Examples:

Buckwheat pancakes with fruit

Rye crispbread with salmon

Greece

Low levels of cardiovascular disease

Typical breakfast selections:

• Toast/whole grain breads
• Jam
• Yogurt with honey
• Greek coffee
• Eggs
• Olives/olive oil
• Feta cheese

Examples:

Horta scramble (eggs, greens, onions, olive oil, garlic, olives, feta, lemon juice)

Barley Rusk Rolls (whole grain bread – eaten with tomato, feta, olive oil; beer is optional)

Copper Canyon Mexica (Tarahumara Indians)

Low levels of type-2 diabetes

Typical breakfast selections:

• Corn, corn meal, corn tortillas
• Beans
• Squash
• Eggs
• Chiles
• Herbs/spices

Examples:

Atole breakfast drink – corn meal, oats, spelt, cinnamon, milk, honey

Huevos - eggs, salsa, beans, corn tortillas

North America

• 70% overweight/obese
• 1 of every 2 deaths from heart disease or cancer

Typical breakfast selections:

• Coffee
• Donuts/pastries
• Bagels
• Eggs
• Sausage
• Bacon
• Cold cereal
• Cow’s milk

Pastries and coffee with cow's milk/cream	Bacon, eggs, and French toast slathered in syrup and butter
Cream cheese and white flour bagel	Chemically coloured sugar-Os

China

Low BMI

Typical breakfast selections:

• Steamed breads (plain or with meat/veggie fillings)
• Tea
• Soy milk
• Tofu
• Hard boiled eggs
• Rice porridge
• Flour/rice noodles – cooked with tomato, vegetables or eggs

Steamed buns stuffed with meat and veggies	Home made soy milk
Veggie soup and rice congee (porridge)	Plain rice congee (porridge)

Africa

• Low levels of cancer
• Optimal digestive health

Typical breakfast selections:

• Millet
• Matoke (like a banana)
• Fruits
• Nuts

Millet porridge with fruit

Toasted millet with plantains

Summary and recommendations

Consider how the breakfast selections of these countries differ from North America. And consider the differing health outcomes.

Some ideas to consider when putting together breakfast:

1. Take your time and pace yourself when eating, if you don’t want to allow time in the morning, prepare food ahead of time
2. Include some protein dense food
3. Eat enough food
4. Eat real, unprocessed food
5. Don’t be afraid of vegetables, or eating “dinner food” (like chicken and salad, or turkey/vegetarian chili) for breakfast
6. Try whole grains (real whole grains like oats, millet, quinoa, amaranth, sprouted grains, etc.)
7. Establish a routine that you can stick with

Extra credit

What about AM exercise – should you do it before or after breakfast?

Remember that body composition depends on overall energy balance. The difference between fasted and non-fasted exercise is likely small, assuming nutrition is dialed in the remainder of the day. Focus on exercising when you feel the best and will have the most productive workout.

Further resources

Breakfast recipes and ideas can be found in Gourmet Nutrition.

References

Kant AK, et al. Association of breakfast energy density with diet quality and body mass index in American adults: National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, 1999-2004. Am J Clin Nutr 2008;88:1396-1404.

Siega-Riz AM, et al. Trends in breakfast consumption for children in the United States from 1965-1991. Am J Clin Nutr 1998;67(suppl):748S-756S.

Miller D. The Jungle Effect. 2008. HarperCollins.

Leidy HJ, et al. Increased dietary protein consumed at breakfast leads to initial and sustained feeling of fullness during energy restriction compared to other meal times. BJN 2009;101:798-803.

Neumark-Sztainer D, et al. Dietary approaches to healthy weight management for adolescents: the New Moves model. Adolesc Med State Art Rev 2008;19:421-430.

Benton D. The influence of children’s diet on their cognition and behavior. Eur J Nutr 2008;47 Suppl 3:25-37.

Pearson N, et al. Family correlates of breakfast consumption among children and adolescents. A systematic review. Appetite 2009;52:1-7.

Greenwood JL & Stanford JB. Preventing or improving obesity by addressing specific eating patterns. J Am Board Fam Med 2008;21:135-140.

Moreno LA & Rodriguez G. Dietary risk factors for development of childhood obesity. Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care 2007;10:336-341.

World Health Organization Statistics. WHO.

Cho S, et al. The effect of breakfast type on total daily energy intake and body mass index: results from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III). J Am College Nutr 2003;22:296-302.

Americans recognize – but ignore – importance of breakfast, survey.

Breakfast Battles.

Breakfast in America, 2001-2002. (PDF)

Kuczynski KJ, et al. Breakfast in America, 2001-2002 [abstract]. The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal 2006;20:A180.

Fast-Food industry goes after breakfast. Maclean’s Magazine.

Click here to join the waiting list.

If we could come up with the perfect nutrition plan for you that included exactly what you needed to eat to reach your goals, you wouldn’t follow it.

Don’t believe us? How often have you seen people diagnosed with lifestyle related disease who don’t take the necessary steps to improve their situation? They say they want to “eat better.” They see health professionals who tell them how to “eat better.” Yet they end up feeling guilty for not “eating better.”

Why is it so hard for them to make the change?

Well, unless they really don’t want to change, there are two major obstacles.

Roadblock #1: Habits

These are ingrained set of day to day food and activity related actions. These are often sub-optimal since people might not have a conscious, logical plan for changing them.

Roadblock #2: Tough times

Things might be getting better; then the tough times hit. People “get busy.” Eating well becomes inconvenient. No one else supports their decision to make a change. When these inevitable circumstances come up, they bail.

Look at the three most frequently reported reasons for eating fast-food:

• It’s quick
• It’s easy to get
• It tastes good

What does this tell us? When the going gets tough, people get going to Burger King.

Advertising and societal norms have a powerful influence. People often go to fast food because they don’t consider other options. They see commercials for fast food, their parents eat it, their friends eat it, their co-workers eat it, and so on. It’s what people do (well, it’s what non-fit people do).

A major battle in the fight for a lean and healthy body is having nutritious food ready and available. Even if you know what’s healthy, if you aren’t prepared when it’s time to eat, you’re doomed.

With that being said, what can you do? You can plan for the unplanned.

What you should know about eating on the go

Amazing new technology! The Lockable Utility Nutritional Containment and Holder (LUNCH) Box

How can you “plan for the unplanned” and have healthy food ready to eat?

A few different ways, actually. Each depends on your willingness, time management, money management, and overall goals.

Eating on the Go Option #1 – Weekly Ritual

Imagine this: Every time you are hungry and ready to eat, you flip open a cooler and take out a container of a tasty, nutritious food. Gosh, healthy nutrition would be fool-proof, right? If that sounds good, then introduce yourself to the “Weekly Ritual.”

The “Weekly Ritual” is commonly referred to as the Sunday ritual in the PN world. You pick one day per week, set aside a few hours, plan your food intake, buy the foods, and prepare the foods.

This will take time, but remember, you get out what you put in. Things that are worthwhile (in nutrition and in life) take time and effort.

While Sunday is a popular day for this, any day will work. Let us warn you, at first, your friends and family may dismiss this new habit as “extremist.” They might insist that you’ve lost your mind and joined a food preparation cult. While certain situations do call for a more relaxed approach to eating (lugging your lunch pail into a restaurant with colleagues for a job interview isn’t very cool), having nutritious eats for the week is generally what fit people do.

Below:  A PN client’s food prepped and packed for the week

Eating on the Go Option #2 – Daily Ritual

So you don’t like the weekly gig, huh? No problem.

How about a daily food prep ritual? In less than 30 minutes, you can get all of your food organized for the day (or the following day). This can be as easy as heading to your local market before/after your day begins and loading up a big container (or 2) at the salad bar with the food you need.

Not that hardcore? Then how about setting the alarm 30 minutes earlier each day and doing a breakfast ritual. It’s a mini version of the weekly ritual. Just gather up the food you have on hand and prep your meals for the day. Steam some veggies, cut some fruit, mix some beans, cook some grains, etc. Just do this while you’re prepping meal #1 for the day. You’re going to do that anyways, right?

Don’t go knucklehead and get yourself sick. Have a cooler, ice packs, and quality containers to preserve your nutritious food stash. Also, other basic kitchen gear like a countertop grill can be handy. See our All About Kitchen Makeovers article for more on this.

Eating on the Go Option #3 – If your religion doesn’t allow rituals, have others do it

Step 1. Go to grocery store. Step 2: Raise hand, reach out, grab container from shelf. Step 3: Exchange money for goods. The end.

Maybe there’s some other reason you’re prevented from doing these regular rituals. If your lifestyle allows, you could hire someone to prepare your food for the week, or get all of your food from a healthy market that does the preparation. You could even investigate a local restaurant that delivers. Even standard grocery stores have plenty of options for the time crunched.

The “having no time” excuse is, well, rationalization taking over. Sorry.

Having others preparing your food can seem extravagant to some people, and we’ll accept that. But for those weeks when you are extremely busy, finding a healthy grocery store, restaurant or food preparation service to do the prep for you can add years and quality to your life. Swing by Whole Foods and get 10 pre-made deli salads for lunch and dinner, a bunch of pre-cut and pre-washed veggies, fruits, pre-made hummus, and raw nuts for snacks. Just mix in a super shake for breakfast and you’re set.

For extra credit

The restaurant lunch

Maybe it’s for business, maybe it’s for school, maybe it’s a date, and maybe it’s alone. Doesn’t matter. The last minute restaurant lunch request will likely occur at some point.

A nutritious selection is simple. Focus on veggies. Mix in some lean protein and whole grains if desired. Add a bit of healthy fat. Order items steamed and dry with sauce and dressing on the side. Don’t eat until you’re stuffed. There you have it. Years of nutrition education summarized in less than 40 words.

When menu-scanning, you can use several strategies:

• Look for protein. Is there: grilled chicken breast, lean beef, shrimp tuna, beans, etc.? Start with that and figure out how to add veggies to it — you can usually request a substitution (such as a side salad instead of fries).
• Look for veggies. Is there a salad? Veggies and dip? Start with that and figure out how to add protein to it — you can often get chicken breast etc. on top of a salad.
• Look at side dishes. Often you can assemble a pretty good meal from a few side orders, such as a single egg or a cup of fruit.
• Look at the appetizer menu. If you’re in North America, it’s a safe bet to assume portions will be big. Try ordering a small item or two instead of a table-crushing platter of ribs.
• Soup and salad are filling, and most restaurants offer some variation on this theme.

Build a repertoire of restaurants that you know offer healthy choices. Keep that list of options in your back pocket as a ready response to “Oh I don’t know, where would you like to go?”

Road trips

Scope the scene

When I travel, the first thing I do is scope out the location around where I’m staying. What natural markets are nearby? Any healthy cafes? Any fast food restaurants I can make fun of? We have this tool known as the internet, you can use it for this kind of research. Check out what “grocery stores near [hotel address]” turns up on Google Maps.

Let me upgrade you

While I’ve stayed in my share of “Bates Motel” style rooms, it’s always well worth it when I upgrade to a room with a mini kitchen and food storage area. That way, at least I can prep one meal in the room and save cash. Those mini-fridges are great, you can store 6-packs of beer…errr…veggies and fruit, use the microwave for oatmeal, and the coffee maker can heat water for green tea. Bonus.

Depending on where you’re going, you can also look into a suite-style hotel room or even a condo or apartment (if you’re staying for a few days or more). Extended stay-type hotels are usually comparably priced and offer a pretty decent kitchen setup that might even beat your one-bedroom apartment.

Motel fridge stocked with yogurt, veggies, and tuna	Proteinous bounty from the Whole Foods near the hotel (found with Google Maps!)
Making a salad with veggie burger protein in a hotel ice bucket on the bathroom counter	Whipping up a salad between flights on an airport floor. Bag of greens, ziplocked veggies, can of tuna, mini container of dressing from a takeout place

The unhealthy skies

Guess what? Planes don’t have healthy food, nor should they. Planes have other things to worry about, like being safe flying machines.

The good news is that bringing a cooler or bag of veggies, fruit and nuts for the travel day is easy and tasty.

Protein bars

If you buy nutrition bars at a store, I have some cutting edge advice – check the ingredients. If it has something you wouldn’t find in your own kitchen, don’t buy it.

Homemade bars are a better option, if you can manage them. GN and PN have excellent recipes.

You can even try savoury tempeh bars: Marinate a hunk of tempeh, bake or roast it, cut it into bars, and throw it into ziploc bags. It’ll keep unrefrigerated for at least a day of traveling.

We’ve also been in the kitchen experimenting with more ideas:

The Near Perfect Bar

½ cup organic molasses or agave nectar (may need slightly less is you use agave – only use molasses if you LIKE the flavor)

½ cup organic (raw if possible) nut or seed butter (e.g., hemp seed, peanut, cashew, almond, macadamia, etc.)

¾ to 1 cup vanilla or unflavored protein powder

¾ to 1 cup organic dried cranberries, diced dates, diced figs, raisins, dark chocolate chips, cocoa nibs, goji berries (pick your favorite, or mix some together)

½ cup organic shredded coconut

2 tsp of greens powder if you are feeling daring

Work all ingredients together, adding the protein powder in small batches so the mixture is firm but not crumbly. Shape into the size and number of bars you prefer. Chill in fridge or freezer.

Other options

Dried fruits and veggies will work for traveling too. There are freeze dried versions that won’t go rancid and are a huge step up from standard vending machine fare. You can get roasted legumes, like chickpeas, for a snack as well. Powdered greens supplements count; you can add them to shakes with this powdery drink mix known as protein powder.

Jerky is fine – you can find jerky made from soy, seitan, ostrich, salmon, and anything in between. (And if you’re in Sedona, Arizona, be sure to visit Buck Thornton’s World O’ Jerky!) Or what the heck, make your own.

Summary and recommendations

Eating healthy can be difficult. But it can also be quite easy. If having healthy food on hand is holding you back, try incorporating a food preparation ritual. See how it works for you. If once a week is overwhelming, try a daily ritual. If you aren’t willing to invest the time and energy into your own food prep, try outsourcing. Your body will thank you.

A bit of planning ahead goes a long way.

If you frequently travel, pack a bag of veggies, fruit, nuts/seeds, along with nutrition bars, protein powder and jerky to keep you fueled.

Further resources

For more in depth guidance on the strategies listed above, see the Precision Nutrition System and Gourmet Nutrition.

PN Audio

PN Video

Eating On The Go

It’s Not About The Food Part 1

It’s Not About The Food Part 2

From the Globe and Mail July 9, 2009:

Breaker! Breaker! Haul your rig over and we’ll bust some lunges

Truckers have long been perceived as the unhealthiest members of the modern work force: a pill-popping, chain-smoking lot who only unbuckle for a plate of steak and eggs at truck stops.

But a growing number of health nuts have infiltrated the 18-wheeler set. And their bosses – concerned by the added costs and dangers of having unhealthy employees on the road – are encouraging more drivers to follow suit.

Take Jeff Beckta. At 5 feet 11 inches, the 44-year-old Winnipegger is 200 pounds of solid muscle.

Five days a week, Mr. Beckta fuels up on protein shakes and works out by visiting various gyms along his triangular route from Manitoba down to North Dakota, to Iowa, Ohio and back around through Southern Ontario.

He judges a place not by its scenery, but by the workout facilities he locates by Googling on his laptop.

“Just last week I found one in Wisconsin,” he says. “A small American town, out-of-the-way gym. It wasn’t too bad.”

Mr. Beckta’s zeal for healthy living sets him apart from many of his comrades. But on highways crisscrossing North America, there are others like him.

Some hang punching bags from their cabs. Others trade fast food for portable mini-refrigerators stuffed with tuna and cottage cheese. On any given night, you might find them doing crunches in their bunks, or lunges in the parking lot.

One Canadian driver, who asked not to be identified, says he straps his bike to the back of his rig, and jogs around truck-stop parking lots. His brother has a national gym membership to the YMCA, which he uses in cities coast to coast.

Full story

References

Rydell SA, et al. Why eat at fast-food restaurants: reported reasons among frequent consumers. J Am Diet Assoc 2008;108:2066-2070.

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“A wise man once said that the kitchen can never be improved upon. Uh… wait a minute… that wasn’t a wise man at all. In fact, I think it was my 8th grade home economics teacher…

Seriously, she said that. And boy was she wrong.” –Ryan D. Andrews

What is a kitchen makeover and why is it important?

Judging by the number of reality makeover shows out there, everyone loves a makeover. Fresh start, clean slate, ugly duckling to swan, whatever you call it, there’s something exciting about change and improvement.

But we’re not talking about swapping your polka dot curtains and patchwork kitchen floor. Oh no, this is all about Berardi’s First Law:

If a food is in your possession or located in your residence, either you, someone you love, or someone you marginally tolerate will eventually eat it.

In other words, keep only food or drinks that you should actually consume.

If a food and/or drink isn’t conducive to your goals, why would you keep it? Insert defensive, self-justifying excuse here:

• I hate wasting food
• It was on special
• My kid/husband/wife/roommate/dog likes these
• It’s for special occasions (like this Tuesday, when I’ll have a bad day at work)
• Etc.

Folks, please. Get real.

If it isn’t helping you reach your goals, you don’t need it.

A kitchen makeover gets rid of the non-nutritious stuff and/or foods that trigger you to engage in poor eating behaviours. Then it replaces the junk with a bounty of health-promoting foods.

A kitchen makeover helps you stay in control and on track. You don’t want to be deciding between ice cream and spinach while standing in front of the fridge at T-minus 15 minutes to dinner time. Food decisions in our kitchen need to be foolproof.

A kitchen makeover helps you plan and structure healthy eating. You’ll appreciate having a safe home base after returning from the “food war-zone,” also known as modern society.

How to do it

Gather all the unhealthy foods from your fridge and pantry. Get a few big garbage bags.

If a certain food has redeeming qualities, then you can take it to a local food bank or soup kitchen. If it’s complete junk, trash it. Get it out of the house.

If you think it’s junk, it is.

What’s “unhealthy food”? (For that matter, what is “food”?)

Isn’t this a waste of food? Nope. If it’s junk, PN doesn’t consider it “food.” Sorry.

Think about this: Would you dig through a dumpster for dinner? No? Why not? Because the food in there isn’t very good for you. It might be expired, rancid, full of bacteria, or at the very least covered in crud. It’s garbage.

So why would you eat foods that have no nutritional value — and which actively take away from your health? How is that different from dumpster diving?

If you are still in doubt, use these guidelines.

Here’s a general idea of what we mean. Do you have any of the following at home?

Obvious junk foods

• Chips
• Cheezies
• Chocolates or candy
• Soda/pop/sweetened drinks
• Alcohol, especially flavoured/sweetened mixed drinks (although small amounts of red wine may have health benefits)
• Instant foods like cake mixes and mashed potatoes
• Margarine and other processed fats
• Most frozen dinners
• Most take-out or restaurant leftovers
• Bowls of candy or other snacks sitting around
• Flavoured nuts (e.g. beer nuts)

Trick foods

These are foods that seem healthy but aren’t. They’ve gone from something good (whole, unprocessed food) to something that a machine barfed out, something that’s full of sugar and chemicals, and/or something that’s had all its original nutrients stripped out. (No, it’s not “healthy” because it says “fruit”. Check the label.)

• Sweetened yogurt and frozen yogurt
• Breads and bagels, unless they’re made exclusively with whole grains
• Other baked goods
• Breakfast cereals
• Crackers, even the whole grain ones
• Fruit, cereal, and/or granola bars
• Regular peanut butter
• Fruit juice

A good rule here is to check the labels. Look for forms of sugar such as high fructose corn syrup as well as hydrogenated oil, fractioned oil, and preservatives.

And if a product loudly proclaims its health benefits on its label… it’s probably not that good for you. “Organic” sugar is still sugar. A Fruit Roll-Up isn’t an actual piece of fruit any more than a cardboard box is actually a spaceship… no matter how much you pretend.

Stuff you wouldn’t even think about

This is even more challenging than the so-called “healthier” foods in the “trick food” list, because you don’t think about these things being bad for you… or think about them at all. (How much time do you spend thinking about BBQ sauce, anyway?)

Thus, most of these just pass under our radar. Until we read the labels and discover that they’re sugar and chemical bombs. Or just not “food” at all.

• Condiments such as BBQ sauce and other sweetened sauces
• Sweetened relishes, mustards, and ketchup
• Salad dressings
• Bread crumbs, croutons, and other dried bread products
• Processed meats such as hot dogs, bacon, and deli meats
• Spreads such as Cheez Whiz or sweetened cream cheeses

Another way to figure out what you don’t want

When in doubt ask yourself a few questions:

1. Does this food come in a bag, box, or plastic package?
2. Does it have more than a couple of ingredients on the label?
3. Can you pronounce all of those ingredients?
4. How far away is this food from what it used to be? (And do you even know what it used to be?)
5. Is this food perishable? Just about anything good for you goes bad quickly.

Obviously, there are exceptions, but for the most part, the above foods aren’t a good idea to consume on a regular basis. Why would you want to test your willpower with them around? You might be regretful when you spend your 40th birthday in line at the pharmacy refilling your Lovastatin and Metformin prescriptions. Bummer.

Here is the vast array of “edible food-like substances” to which one of our clients said farewell.

Help! My kitchen’s empty now!

Now your fridge and pantry might look desolate after getting rid of the unhealthy foods. It’s time to fill them back up with healthy replacements for the garbage you just unloaded.

A corollary of Berardi’s First Law is this:

If you wish to be healthy and lean, you must remove all foods not conducive to those goals from said residence and replace them with a variety of better, healthier choices.

In other words, this law works both ways. If the food’s available to you, you’ll eat it.

If an unhealthy food is in your possession, you’ll eat it. If a healthy food is in your possession, you’ll eat it.

All you have to do is make the available food good stuff, and nature takes care of the rest.

Thus, take the restocking process seriously. It’s just as important as the removal process. If your shelves don’t look much different after nixing the junk, then you’re quickly leaving the realm of “nutrition degenerate.” Congrats.

How to restock

Here’s how to quickly restock some nutritious foods (remember not to “over-think” it):

Pick your 3 favourite:

• Vegetables
• Fruits
• Lean proteins
• Nuts/seeds
• Whole grains (oats, quinoa, wild rice, brown rice, sprouted grain breads, corn, amaranth, etc.)

Write them down. We don’t care if they’re frozen or fresh. Just have them on hand so you can actually eat them.

Outside of these staples, any doubts you have about buying certain foods are likely accurate. We’re not saying you should never eat “Food X” again (that decision is up to you), but you may not want to keep the bulk/wholesale four year supply stored on top of the fridge.

This has about 149 too many pieces:

And remember, when you are restocking healthy foods, don’t be fooled by the front of the package. Those darn labels will call out to you with claims like “low-fat,” “no added sugar,” “fat free,” “organic,” “whole grain,” and so on.

Yogurt with M&Ms. Advertised on the package (in two places) as a “healthy snack” with “wholesome ingredients”. Ingredient list includes 10 distinct artificial colours and 4 types of sugar.

Don’t believe it. Keep the ingredients real. Try to shop for seasonal, organic and local food items when possible. You get what you pay for. The fewer ingredients the better (well, except for pixy sticks)!

Check out how simple this restocking process can be based on the following sample shopping lists.

Note: Yes – the rest of the family (kids and spouse) can eat these foods too. Why would you feed your family something you wouldn’t eat yourself?

Veggies all ready to go

Remember, those are just examples. You could live well into your 90s and still not exhaust all healthy food options.

Now that you have your list, head over to the place that sells food, known as the grocery store. Be on guard: the grocery shopping experience doesn’t end when you unpack your reusable cloth grocery bag at home. The fun is just starting. Wash and cut the veggies and cook the lean proteins and whole grains.

In other words, have the food ready to eat.

Beyond food: The equipment of eating well

Food isn’t the only component of a kitchen makeover, oh no. Having some basic kitchen gear is vital, and Easy Bake Ovens don’t count.

Basic Kitchen Checklist

• Measuring cups and spoons
• Cookware set
• Knives
• Stainless steel tools and silicon spatula
• Indoor grill
• Wok
• Rice cooker/steamer
• Food processor
• Tea kettle
• Blender
• Cutting board
• Large bowls
• Wooden spoons
• Strainer
• Vegetable peeler
• Graters
• Baking sheets
• Casserole dishes

Summary and recommendations

Healthy eaters have healthy homes. Healthy people ensure that their environment supports their goals. Changing your surroundings is one of the best ways to start your journey to living better.

1. Part ways with non-nutritious foods and eliminate anything in your house that doesn’t support your goals.
2. Re-stock with healthy options.
3. Use a list for your next grocery store visit. Use our suggestions as a guide.
4. Also, make sure you have basic kitchen gear to prepare and store your bounty of healthy food.

Follow these steps and you’ll have your kitchen made over in less than 24 hours.

For the step-by-step process of making over your kitchen, use the Precision Nutrition System and the Gourmet Nutrition cookbook.

Extra credit

Keep a running grocery list all week of items you need to replenish.

Stock up on frozen fruits and vegetables so you have a back up when the fresh supply runs out.

Build a kitchen that you enjoy, bring in a stereo, turn on some music that will get you in a good mood. Better mood = better food.

De-clutter. The more space you have in the kitchen, the better. (And the less you have to clean.)

If you like to watch TV, get one for your kitchen. This way you won’t be in a rush.

Keep a large cutting board by the sink. This will allow you to quickly slice and dice veggies.

Keep eco-friendly soap, biodegradable sponges, and clean towels handy to maintain a clean kitchen. Dirty kitchen = potential food poisoning.

Further resources

Precision Nutrition System

Gourmet Nutrition cookbook

Healthy Kitchen Makeovers

Berardi’s Kitchen Part 1 & Part 2

References

Kratt P, et al. The role of availability as a moderator of family fruit and vegetable consumption. Health Educ Behav 2000;27:471-482.

Raynor HA, et al. Is dietary fat intake related to liking or household availability of high- and low-fat foods? Obes Res 2004;12:816-823.

Cullen KW, et al. Availability, accessibility, and preferences for fruit, 100% fruit juice and vegetables influence children’s dietary behavior. Health Educ Behav 2003;30;615-626.

Campbell KJ, et al. Associations between the home food environment and obesity-promoting eating behaviors in adolescence. Obesity (Silver Spring) 2007;15:719-730.

Gattshall ML, et al. Validation of a survey instrument to assess home environments for physical activity and healthy eating in overweight children. Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act 2008;5:3.

Fulkerson JA, et al. The validation of a home food inventory. Int J Behav Nutr Pys Act 2008;5:55-65.

Hanson NI, et al. Associations between parental report of the home food environment and adolescent intakes of fruits, vegetables and dairy foods. Public Health Nutr 2005;8:77-85.

Campbell KJ, et al. Family food environment and dietary behaviors likely to promote fatness in 5-6 year-old children. Int J Obes (Lond) 2006;30:1272-1280.

Haerens L, et al. The contribution of psychosocial and home environmental factors in explaining eating behaviors in adolescents. Eur J Clin Nutr 2008;62:51-59.

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