Tag Archive | Processed Foods

Love and Food Addiction

Sep22

There is a reason people are addicts. No one chooses an addiction, especially a food addiction. Why would they?

Obesity runs rampant in the United States because it has become so easy to eat unhealthy foods. The quest for instant gratification flies in the face of honoring these bodies we wear from the time we are born to the time we die.

Fast food is easy, not as cheap as it used to be but still cheap, over-processed, and unprepared to provide the body with nutrition.

Fast, over-processed food is not meant to provide you with nutrients. It is meant to taste good and fill you up and that is what it does.

There is no energy involved. In fact, most people feel like sleeping after they eat at a fast food restaurant.

There is no love in fast food. It is salty, often greasy, full of fats–that’s why it makes you feel full temporarily–and it ruins your health.

Where is the love you used to taste in homemade pot roast with mashed potatoes made from real potatoes and fresh vegetables that we didn’t call veggies and say you had to eat them because they were good for you?

Food is supposed to be good for you. Food was once a way to express love.

But something happened along the way. Instead of enjoying all the tastes, flavors, and sensual feelings a meal once provided, food has become a tool to stuff down feelings and pretend it’s okay to be alone, ignored, and undervalued.

Food doesn’t feel good anymore. And most of the time, it doesn’t make those eating it feel the pleasure or nutritional benefits food is meant to provide.

This is particularly true for people with a food addiction.

Food addicts are missing an important, life-enriching nutrient from their daily lives. It’s not food we hunger for. It is love.

Love is the feast that fills you up but not out. It fills up your senses and tames your wildest hungers.

I am not talking about sex. I am talking about love. Without love, one can not overcome a food addiction.

With love, you can. It’s as simple as that.

It’s Never Too Late to Be Great! ®

Subsidizing Processed Food=Subsidizing Food Addiction

Feb10

I read a great article this week by Mark Bittman, author of the Minimalist food column in the New York Times. The article, A Food Manifesto, appeared in my hometown newspaper, The St. Petersburg Times.

Mr. Bittman offered some suggestions that would, as he put it, “make the growing, preparation and consumption of food healthier, saner, more productive, less damaging and more enduring”.

Among the suggestions he offered, all of which I support wholeheartedly, was one to end government subsidies to processed food.

I immediately thought about how these foods contribute to obesity, poor eating habits and poor health in general, and food addictions.

So why does the government subsidize them and instead focusing on real food, one of the other suggestions listed in the article?

In backing the marketers of junk food, is the government not also supporting poor eating habits, food addictions, and obesity? It may  sound sinister, but you can’t have it both ways.

Maybe it’s time to educate ourselves on what goes on behind the scenes of our food supply. It might help connect the dots and make the big picture a whole lot clearer.

Anyone who has ever struggled with a food addiction or emotional eating problem, or is clinically obese, has Type II Diabetes or any of the other myriad ailments that processed foods promote knows just how serious this situation has become.

Even if Americans can’t agree on foreign policy, guns, or abortion, maybe we should unite on this one. Our food supply is one of our most precious resources and we need to speak out about it.