Controlled by a Cookie: When Foods Become Drugs

by Barbara Berkeley, MD

Do you take medicine to treat your blood pressure?  Once you swallow your pill, can you control your blood pressure via sheer willpower?  While such feats of bodily control are reported by swamis and other advanced body-mind practitioners, they are not in the average person's repetoire.  And a good thing too, because the power of drugs to take over ailing body systems is the reason they work. Medicinal drugs are substances which enter from the outside and take control of inner processes.  They cause chemical changes that in turn change those who take them..hopefully with positive effect.  But, as we well know, drugs can have negative effects too, especially when their chemical properties are used to create pleasure.

Consider these two definitions of the word "drug":

1. a chemical substance that affects the processes of the mind or body.  

2. a substance used recreationally for its effects on the central nervous system, such as a narcotic.

 

Every overweight person I've ever encountered recognizes that certain foods have drug-like properties. During an intake visit, a new patient will generally put his finger right on the foods that are submarining him.  He or she will often use the language of addiction to describe these foods:  "I'm addicted to sweets",  "I'm a chocoholic", "I just can't stop eating bread."  It's not coincidence that such language should leap to the lips.   Foods DO alter the processes of the mind and/or body.  Foods ARE substances that are used recreationally and which do have effect on the central nervous system.  In fact, certain foods can be viewed very much as drugs.  Despite this, we believe that once ingested, we can control these particular "drugs" by sheer willpower. 

Perhaps you do not agree that food and drugs are similar.  After all, we are designed to eat food and even if ingesting food does cause changes within the body, they should be natural, expected changes.  Until recently, this has certainly always been the case, but let me suggest two reasons why things may have changed.

First: There can be no question that eating food is a natural behavior that provokes natural responses. I would make the case, however, that in a very real way we no longer eat "food".  Processed foods that are chock full of preservatives, colors, and chemicals have little resemblance to what our body is equipped to handle.  Foods that hit us with enormous punches to the insulin system---the sugar and starch foods---are also very new to human experience.   

Second: Many of us who eat the western diet or SAD (Standard American Diet) have developed inappropriate reactions to eating these newer foods.  This is especially true for those foods that turn into sugar after digestion (the sugars themselves and the starchy carbs like grain, cereal, pasta, flour based foods and potatoes).  If we have begun to develop a "broken" reponse...in the form of what we call insulin resistance... we will react in a new and negative way to eating.  We will experience more hunger, more craving and less ability to control these foods.

 

Recent research into the modern epidemic of insulin resistance suggests that those of us whose insulin is no longer properly interacting with our body may also have a problem with insulin's role in the brain. The brain's form of insulin resistance occurs when insulin-related signals which normally tell us to stop eating are blunted.  Thus, foods that cause insulin release are no longer equipped with the satiety safety valve that nature intended.  Indeed, these foods may make cause more hunger rather than less.   And who among us has not experienced the inexplicable carbohydrate craving that follows a day of bread, pasta and cookie consumption? 

 

Thus, my hypothesis is that foods become drugs when our body no longer tolerates them well.  As a child, you might have been quite able to eat a cupcake and simply stop.  As an adult, one doughnut might lead to an entire box.  When drugs are at the helm, you can forget willpower.  Be they medicines in pill form or cookies that are decorated like Grover, your physiology is co-opted and someone else is driving the bus.  

 

Sometimes I use the following analogy in the office:  think of your trigger foods as concealed aliens. Remember the movie Men in Black?  An innocuous shop-keeper might look harmless, but was actually a man-eating cockroach!  Drug-foods are like that.  They look attractive, luscious, and controllable, but allow them past your lips and you are under their control.  You can bemoan your lack of willpower all you want, but if you've given yourself over to the aliens you are likely to spend quite some time doing things you didn't intend. 

 

Many people simply can't understand how something as small as a cookie could cause them to abandon all resolve.  But there is the error!  A cookie isn't small at all.  The chemical signals and bodily changes that start the moment a susceptible person sees and smells that cookie are quickly overwhelming.  Eat that cookie and it is very possible that---diet-wise---all is lost. 

 

This illustrates  the problem I have with advice that suggests that it's ok to eat everything in moderation.  Yes, if you are a person whose food-processing systems are all in good shape, this may be a fine strategy.  In fact, if this works for you, you might well be unable to understand why it wouldn't work for everyone.  But most people who are overweight have gotten heavy because food has become drug-like for them.  To me, this is part of a larger picture which includes fundamental physiological changes in the way their body handles that food (mostly the starches and sugars).  If you have been wrestling with willpower and blame yourself for being weak, I advise you to start seeing the true nature of your trigger foods.  Start with a healthy respect for their power and a strategy of avoidance whenever possible.  Remember, if you don't take a drug it can't own you.