Author: Lic.Lucía Feito Allonca, Heath Law and Biomedicine. Patient’s Rights Specialist. Diabetes Educator (DE)

Do you find it hard to choose the foods that are most beneficial to your health, and say no to cravings?

You are not alone. This is a challenge we face on a daily basis, as individuals and as a society.

The health consequences can be compounded when, in addition, we live with a chronic health condition such as diabetes.

In this interview with the expert on processed food addiction, the renowned and prestigious Dr. Joan Ifland, we discover the mechanism by which we get "hooked" on "food" and the keys to free ourselves and enjoy more happiness and health.

WHAT IS PROCESSED FOOD ADDICTION?

Dr. Joan Ifland: Well, there are a couple of ways to think about this. You can define processed food addiction by what the brain does. Or you can define it by what people do, by their experience.

If you wonder what the brain is doing, the brain is flooding with cravings. There are cells in the brain specifically designed to release pleasure chemicals, reward centers, addiction centers, they have different names. But what they do is release floods, have cravings and then floods of euphoria.

So you might have an overwhelming desire, a craving for a food that, you know, you're not supposed to eat, or else it's bad for you, and you eat it anyway.

It is the brain's reaction to a recreational drug. And that gives rise to 11 behaviors:

These 11 behaviors are used by the American Psychiatric Association to diagnose addictions to this is a set of criteria that are adopted from the criteria used to diagnose alcoholism.

UNINTENTIONAL CONSUMPTION is number one, where you wake up and say you have a plan to not eat processed foods, but you eat them anyway. Or you're just going to eat one out of the box, but you eat the box. And we know that about 80% of Americans have unintentional consumption because they're obese or overweight.

FAILURE TO REDUCE is that you have lost weight and gained it back. Or you can't lose weight, you want to eat less, but you can't.

TIME SPENT. So it's not just time spent, like when you leave your office or your workplace, and you stop at a few fast food places or you stop at a convenience store. Or you go to the grocery store, even though you don't really need anything. So it's that kind of time invested, you buy something, often people hide to eat processed foods, you hide, which takes longer, and then you're sleepy afterwards. So you sleep until it goes away. So that can take a lot of time.But then the rest of the time, you can be thinking about processed foods, planning processed meals, looking at recipes, so it's actually taking you more and more time.

CRAVINGS. We know that cravings increase with weight. They're, they're people with higher BMI like body mass index, they have higher cravings. And from there, we know that over 80% of Americans suffer from cravings.

6) 7) Behaviors, their relationship problems, abandoned activities. And your inability to fulfill roles. So it's about big life roles that don't work, you don't socialize anymore, or you don't go to your bowling league, your relationships have problems because you're irritable, or because you don't really want to connect with that person, because you're thinking about going to get food, or you're just not able to fulfill roles because you're sick, or your body shape doesn't allow you to fulfill the role anymore. Like you can't get down on the floor with your kids. And you don't want to apply for a promotion. Because you're tired and your brain is foggy. So that's a group of three criteria.

8) DANGEROUS DRINKING. People think about drinking and driving. But people are also, you know, juggling their food and their drink, and driving with their elbow. We know that at some point, a body shape, you know, if your body shape is big enough, you can't see your feet anymore. But you're still eating.

9, 10, 11) The last three are more physical. So their use despite the knowledge of the consequences. And I think type one diabetics would have this, when they eat something that they know will spike their blood sugar. We know that there is a withdrawal syndrome. And we see epidemics of these withdrawal symptoms, headaches, fatigue, depression, irritability, stomachaches, so we know they're prevalent in the culture, and then tolerance, which means you consume more, you eat more of the substance over time, like you used to take a small container and now you take a bigger container.

I used to take it only after dinner. Now you also take it with lunch. Over time you consume more, and that's called tolerance or progression. And we see across the U.S. population that people are consuming a higher percentage of processed foods and processed foods every year. So these criteria support the idea that over 80% of Americans have a serious addiction.

WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO STUDY THIS ADDICTION?

Well, what happened was that I gave up sugars and flours, all kinds of sweeteners, and any kind of flour, wheat flour, bean flour, I gave up flours and I gave up sugar. And my life changed radically.

This was January 1, 1996. And immediately, in four days, the cravings stopped, which I didn't know was possible, the bloating stopped, the confusion stopped, the fatigue stopped in four days. So people should know that this is really fun. It's really fun to give up processed foods because you get great rewards.

I did it to lose weight. I ate a lot, I wasn't hungry, but I was losing a kilo a week. And the next week, I noticed that my allergies had improved. My eyes weren't red and swollen, and the lifelong sinusitis was gone.

I thought, well, this is great. I love this eating plan. And then on the third week, specifically January 18, 1996, when I was only 18 days in, I realized that I hadn't been yelling at my family.

"I had a problem with anger. I could get into a rage, even if I didn't want to. And I was doing a lot of things related to childhood trauma to make it stop. But I had no idea that there was a chemical that was driving my anger. And it was refined carbohydrates."

WHAT IS THE ROLE OF THE FOOD INDUSTRY IN THIS ADDICTION?

That's a very good question. I got an MBA, a master's degree in business administration, from Stanford in 1978. And I know that was a long time ago, but I'm very aware of business models. How do companies make profits?

In the case of processed foods, there is an addiction business model. There is a craving business model. If you have a destructive product with no value, but you can create cravings for it, then you can create profits. So the addiction business model does exactly that.

It actually started with the tobacco industry. And they took their addiction business model, their craving business model, to processed foods in the mid-1980s.

In three years, the tobacco industry bought three major processed food manufacturers. They bought Kraft, Nabisco and General Foods in the U.S. in three short years, between 1985 and 1988. Now, why would someone who makes his money from cravings and addiction go into processed foods?

Well, the big reason is high fructose corn syrup. So high fructose corn syrup came on the market in 1980 or so. And it was cheap. And you could get as much of it as you wanted. There are hundreds of miles of corn fields in the US. So the supply was almost unlimited. And it was very, very cheap. And very addictive. We have evidence that high fructose corn syrup goes through the body like corn alcohol. So now they had a complete business model.

As I've published on this topic, I call it the five A's of the addiction business model. And you start by hiding additive substances in the product. So they hid extra nicotine in cigarettes.

As soon as they bought Kraft, Nabisco and General Foods, they hired a consultant, Howard Moscowitz, to hide excessive amounts of high fructose corn syrup, salt, fat and processed foods.

So, for example, in 1970, you could eat a slice of bread and go about your day. You could eat a sandwich with two slices of bread, no problem. But let's say in 1999, that slice of bread contained so much salt, corn syrup and so much fat. When you ate that slice of bread, you triggered those cravings.

Now, sugar activates the dopamine pathway. Salt activates the opioid pathway, and fats activate the cannabinoid pathway. So now you have three main pathways on flour that activates the serotonin pathway. So now that one slice of bread has activated all four craving pathways in the brain and then you have to eat another slice.

And you come back and you have another slice and another slice, and before long you may have eaten the whole loaf. That's the way the food industry is. They did. sugar, flour, fat and salt in the products. So that's an A, that's an additive formulation of the product. That's a lot of advertising.

They had tobacco-based advertising relationships, they simply incorporated the processed foods right on top of it. They had availability, because they had relationships to distribute tobacco, they just put the processed foods right into the convenience stores.

They had affordability. That was the key to high fructose corn syrup. Because before you had high fructose corn syrup, your sweetener was sugar. And sugar was controlled by the drug dealers in Florida.

This sugar from the sugar cartel is more addictive than cocaine and heroin, according to some research, so boom, suddenly they could meet the affordability criteria. People could buy these cheap high fructose corn syrup-based products.

Moreover, the early age of onset. Advertising and logos are able to stimulate the release of cravings.

These 5 "A's" of the addiction model were taken directly from tobacco and applied directly to processed foods:

• Addictive Product Formulation

• Advertising

• Availability

• Affordability

• Young Age of Onset
  

Is that so, and how do we know? Because when they took the tobacco companies to court, the courts ordered them to archive the internal documents. And there are researchers, amazing researchers, who go through those files and reconstruct the history. And that's how we know

IMPACT ON OUR HEALTH

We have eight ways that processed foods cripple cell function, they inflame the cell, there's so much sugar and fat to process that that junk, the byproducts build up in the cell.

And now the mitochondria can't move around the cell, the quality of the fat is very low. So the cell membrane doesn't form very well. And it's through the membrane that the cell makes decisions about what to put in and what to put out as waste. The membrane communicates and coordinates with other cells. So when cell membranes don't work, cells don't work.

There may be what is called insulin resistance. The pump that brings in glucose is worn out. So the cell now has trouble getting glucose and glycation occurs. There is oxidative stress. The cells are literally crippled by processed foods. So if your brain cells are crippled, you can develop dementia, bipolar, you can have anxiety, depression.

And also, because of the way processed foods drag down the blood supply to the midbrain. Because of the addictive centers and the stress centers, your frontal lobe doesn't get enough blood flow. That's where you have problems with attention span, and learning and decision making, and problem solving, and memory and impulse control. It's all related to processed foods.

And then you can have skin problems, you can have heart problems, the liver can fill up with fat. Now you have FIDIC fatty liver and you have toxicity problems, the pancreas can fill up with fat, your bones can stop working because the marrow is too full of fat and your joints serve. So these are inflammatory substances, your joints can get sore and your heart your brain can get inflamed AND sugar particularly is cold. It's part of LDL, but it gets under the skin that lines the arteries of the heart and can create crusts or plaques that over time build up and block the heart. Do you have any heart disease from it? I do, over the 20 almost 28 years I've been doing this, since 1996, I've seen almost everything disappear. When two things happen. One, you get off the processed foods and two, you get into a compassionate community. That's how we get there in the long run. You know, empowerment to fight this. These are powerful corporations and we have to feel empowered to fight them. Yeah, so it's very possible.

IS IT POSSIBLE TO OVERCOME ADDICTION TO PROCESSED FOODS?

Belonging to the right community is essential. If you belong to the right community, it's easy.

Dr. Ifland offers community-based addiction recovery services on her website, with three programs for English speakers. We invite you to learn more in the video interview (Link).

Dr. Joan Ifland's advice for those of us living with diabetes: Can I stop eating processed foods? Yes, you can. You don't have to let type one diabetes make you sick. So, start with self-awareness.

What prompted me to eat that food that made my blood sugar go up? Why did I eat that? And when you go back in your memory, I think you'll find that it's cravings and cravings are not normal.

Cravings are the signal from these very active reward centers, dopamine, serotonin, opioids and cannabinoids. These are the same centers that become overactive in an addiction, but you know, they're there. If you have cravings. They are not normal. They're not supposed to be in your head. 

We greatly appreciate the time taken by Dr. Ifland to conduct this interview with diaVerge.

We believe that processed food addiction may be very present in our type 1 diabetes community, especially considering the statistical data provided, and that this may constitute an additional challenge for the daily management of our health condition.

Remember: we are here to help and accompany you, and we firmly believe in the right of the person living with diabetes to have all the information that could help create an improvement for their health, wellbeing, and quality of life.