FOOD ADDICTION TRUTHS

FOOD ADDICTION TRUTHS:

1. The most addictive food/taste/sensory combination in our modern diet is the trifecta of salt, sugar, and fat. The three together are irresistible to those of with this addiction, but even two out of three can be too alluring to resist depending on your individual preferences (i.e. bacon = salt + fat, Oreos = sugar + fat).
2. Processed food manufacturers, food scientists and developers, and restaurants know #1 to be true and will exploit it to their advantage at every opportunity.
3. The fact that #2 is true doesn’t absolve us of responsibility for our behavior.
4. The world isn’t going to accommodate our food addiction; our trigger foods will continue to be everywhere, probably for the rest of our lives.
5. Thinking that we can moderate our intake of certain foods (“I can quit whenever I want” or “I’m just gonna have a bite”) is part of the disease. It’s clever and wants to keep us hooked.
6. Food addiction is part emotional (guilt, shame), part behavioral (seeking the fix, anticipating the indulgence, creating the opportunity), part habitual (happy hour on Friday nights, a treat at the grocery store to eat on the way home), and part chemical (those pesky feel-good chemicals in our brains that want nothing more than a shot of salt/sugar/fat).
7. Food addiction cannot be “cured.”
8. Even thin people can be food addicts.
9. Addiction is not a character flaw or moral shortcoming.
10. “Sugar” isn’t just white granulated sugar; it’s all simple carbohydrates including but not limited to: anything ending in –ose (glucose, dextrose, lactose, etc.), natural sweeteners like honey, maple syrup, and molasses, and all refined grains and products made from them such as white bread, pizza crust, pretzels, hamburger buns, muffins, pancakes, waffles, biscuits, crackers, etc. Oh, and just to completely suck, beer is liquid bread, so yeah, that too. Dang it!