The way you and I eat today is governed by an appetite system which evolved over an incredibly long period of time – millions of years.

Approaching mealtimes, our brains fire off an array of electrical and chemical signals, to drive us to find food and eat it, just as our ancestors did. But modern foraging is a totally different ball-game.

Grinding grains, working them into a dough, lighting a fire and baking one flatbread at a time, versus walking a few yards to the kitchen.

 

It’s not just that someone has done the hard work for us

It’s not just less work that we’re talking about here. Bread is now processed to add shelf-life, micronutrients and to create an appealing “mouth-feel”. We’re not eating anything like the same bread as our forebears.

Much of what we’re eating, as writer Michael Pollan* points out, would be un-recognisable to our great-grandmothers, let alone their great-grandmothers.

Whilst our great-great-great-grandmothers are no longer with us, our ancient appetite system sure is.

The skill of food technologists, harnessed by food manufacturers, has given us stimulation from food that our brains haven’t seen before. For some of us, our brains respond to this stimulation with a desire for more.

Not everyone reacts like this of course. Not because they have more willpower or stronger moral fibre, but because their biological appetite system is influenced differently. Perhaps because they’ve had little exposure to ‘junk foods’ or because chronic stress hasn’t altered their biological response to food.

 

The clash between how our appetite system evolved and our modern food environment

There’s a huge clash, between a system that evolved to help us find and consume food when the supply varied with the seasons, and plentiful year-round energy-dense food spiked with preservatives and flavourings.

What I’m particularly interested in is how this clash may relate to how we approach trying to lose weight in such a way that it stays off for good. I’ve heard from countless people that dieting has only ever worked for them in the short-term.

The more I listened to what people were telling me about why this was, the more it seemed that four specific challenges of our modern food environment seem to push people’s weight back up again.

 

Four specific eating challenges

Challenge number 1:

How to wait to eat until we are actually hungry when we are continually bombarded with reminders of food

Being bombarded by reminders of food doesn’t stop when we close our front door.  Advertising means that reminders of food are beamed into our homes through whatever media channels are open. Food ads are as carefully constructed as the food they aim to sell us – alluring, aspirational and exciting.

Henry Dimbleby** says that about £215 million is spent annually in the UK on pre-watershed ads for HFSS (high in fat, sugar or salt) food. You can’t tell me that companies would invest that sort of cash if it didn’t boost their bottom line.

As Dimbleby and Lewis say in their book “Ravenous: How to get ourselves and our planet into shape”…

“The reinforcing feedback loops within the Junk Food Cycle have led us into escalation: our appetite steers us towards junk food, so companies invest more in it, we eat more, they invest more, we get sicker.”

 

Challenge number 2:

Once we start eating, how to stop once we’re just full

This is especially tricky when food is really moreish & tempting to keep eating. The things you’re likely to overeat will be those that have a combination of flavours and textures, engineered to be released in a cascade in your mouth.

Here’s where trouble with portion sizing comes in. A small portion of something fabulous has the potential to satisfy your appetite and let you get definitely hungry by your next meal. But larger portions and bundling (promotions of food that mean buying more items seems to be a bargain) push us towards over-consumption. Especially those of us who abhor leaving food on our plate.

 

Challenge number 3:

How to manage cravings for particular foods

Even when we’re not eating them, those foods that have been engineered to activate the pleasure centres in our brains can nag away at us mentally.

Blissful experiences in life are remembered as though they’re in technicolour, and light up more brightly than mundane memories. When the thought of a super-pleasurable food pops in to your mind (ably assisted by food advertising), and your mind elaborates the memory of how lovely it tasted, before long it’s all you can think about.

Whether you’re hungry or not, this sort of mental craving can have you headed for the fridge before you know.

 

Challenge number 4:

How to reduce ‘emotional eating’

Turning to food to help manage uncomfortable emotions is something that drives people to eat much more than they intend.

In some ways we can think of high calorie foods as a form of medication for difficult feelings, because engineered foods that affect our bodies & brains do have an effect on how we feel.

The challenge here is how to reduce our reliance on those foods, particularly when they do the job pretty well. And they are cheap, legal and available without prescription.

Read more on the subject

This is such an important topic for public health, and personally for those of us who do find navigating our modern food environment challenging.

There are loads of informative and helpful books out there. The most recent I’ve read is “Ravenous” – I couldn’t resist the title! And Henry Dimbleby is a bit of a hero of mine. I’d really recommend it if you want to understand more about the complexity of the food system, both from the point of view of our health and that of our planet. I’ll leave you with one more quote from Ravenous, which reflects much of what Appetite Retraining is all about:

“If you want to be healthier, practise eating. Not snacks or treats that make you feel miserable, but actual food. Stop worrying about calories – which tell you next to nothing about the contents of your food – and tune into your hunger. Which foods do you find yourself craving, and when? Which leave you feeling content and which just make you hungrier? The better you understand your own appetite and how it responds to the promptings of the Junk Food Cycle, the less fraught your relationship with food will become”

References

* Pollan, M. (2009) In defence of food: the myth of nutrition and the pleasures of eating. Penguin

** Dimbleby, H and Lewis, J (2023) Ravenous: How to get ourselves and our planet into shape. Profile Books

 

Photo by Chad Montano for Unsplash