The Facts About Food Addiction….why it’s not your fault.

It’s called the “bliss point.”  Food companies and their chemists have researched and developed the perfect combination of salt, fat, and sugar in any certain processed food or fast food that sends blissed out taste receptors on your tongue and in your brain to crave and seek more and more of this food.  While you think you can’t stop at just one because you are “weak-willed” or “addicted”, it’s really the fact that these food manufacturers have gotten into your brain and into your taste receptors just the way they wanted and know that they have you hook, line and sinker to keep buying their product.  Their bottom line isn’t to please please your taste buds, but rather to fill their wallet.  This is how they continue to sell a product.  Ever see the slogan on a box of “Cheez-its” that reads, “Get Your Own Box.” This is due to the fact that this food company knows they have hit the nail on the head with the Cheez-it and it’s powerful hold on people. Yet recently a prominent journalist and author of the book, Salt Sugar and Fat How the Food Giants Hooked Us, Michael Moss actually tells of trying “Cheez-its” without the normal perfected “bliss point” of salt on them and found them inedible and unpalatable.  Apart from the perfect combination of salt, these highly sought after crackers are just replications of a small square of paper cardboard.

So now that we can see how food companies are trying to keep us feeling like we can’t give up these foods we crave, what is one to do in order to begin to rid the need for this food?

The solution is two-fold: First, you must go cold turkey.  No not the food. But completely stop all consumption of this food for at least 3 days.  While this may seem impossible, the human body and brain is very adaptable to detoxification and can greatly undue the need for a certain chemical structure of a food in as little as 3 days.  This helps the liver to calm down, and the brain to ease the need for certain cravings.  The second component is to avoid anything that is processed and refined that will also contain a “bliss point” to make you continue to seek that food you think you can’t live without. Instead, you will want to crowd out man-made processed and fast foods with foods made by a Creator, from the earth in their most natural, unaltered state.  If it sounds too simple, your right, it is, even though sometimes it seems their is nothing simple or easy about giving up a food you crave.  Understanding that the underlying need for this food has nothing to do with your will power or lack their of, though, can make it much more manageable to know that you can avoid this food for a short amount of time and the “bliss point’ in your brain for this particular food will go away.  On a better note, your taste receptors will gain a new found love for REAL food and develop natural “bliss points” for things like roasted asparagus and broccoli, fresh wild caught salmon cooked in butter, and extra dark chocolate melted over berries.

If you are ready to not let a certain food and it’s man-made “bliss point” keep you from achieving your optimal health, then I encourage you to visit my website and check out my “3 Day Sugar Detox” on my “SHOP” page and let me help you begin to reset your own internal “bliss point” towards healing, nourishing, real food.

Or consider setting up a Nutrition Therapy Consult with me either in person or on the phone where I can build a customized meal plan just for you and help you reach your optimal individual health with the bonus side effect of fat loss and energy-gain!