In the third installment of Facts & Findings with Dr. Plant, we hear his view of the nutritional crisis we face today.
We often go about our day not looking at food as addictive, but there are many different addictive components of food, and the food industry knows and exploits this. Certain compounds in food will release the neuronal hormone called dopamine. Dopamine is often called the reward hormone because it is the hormone that the brain releases to cause a “euphoric” feeling in the body.
Stimulant drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamine, and morphine all cause a strong release of dopamine in the body. The release of dopamine is responsible for the “high” but is also responsible for the addictive properties of the drug. Dopamine releases are not necessarily bad; in fact we are genetically engineered to release dopamine in response to certain compounds in food. For example, when an infant breast-feeds the baby experiences a slight dopamine release due to a compound similar to morphine in the mother’s milk, this in turn makes the baby experience a small “euphoric” feeling and subconsciously seek out to breast-feed again in the future. Unfortunately, there are several compounds that cause a dopamine release in food that have been extracted, isolated, enriched and added to other food to cause addictions.
Two major compounds found in food that cause a dopamine response are sugar and casein. Sugar is enriched and added in surplus to many of the foods and drinks we consume on a daily basis. The abundance of sugar in our diets has created an addiction to those foods. This is why we crave soda even though we are not thirsty and will consume a milkshake even after eating a hamburger meal. The abundance of sugar in our diets makes it very difficult for us to turn down food even though we are not hungry.
Casein, another component responsible for food addiction, is the major component of cheese, and like sugar, causes a dopamine release in the brain. When the body breaks down casein it produces a byproduct called casomorphine, which is an opioid peptide and will travel to the brain to release dopamine. Have you ever wondered we crave pizza and can’t stop eating it even after the third slice? It is because casomorphine causes a release of dopamine in the brain making us want to go back for more.
The food industry knows that sugar and cheese are addictive and that is why they spend millions of dollars each year isolating and enriching the sugar from sugar cane, or engineering a super “sugar” in the form of High Fructose Corn Syrup and adding it and cheese to everything in our diet. These items have been added so abundantly to our diets that the average person consumes roughly 35lb of high fructose corn syrup a year, a 100lbs of added sugar to food that it is not naturally found in, and 34 pounds of cheese a year. This equates to the average individual eating 1,340 calories a day just from added sugar and corn syrup, and another 215 calories a day in just cheese consumption. This addiction alone is causing us to eat ourselves fat and sick.
In fact, a study was just publicized that illustrates how addictive these compounds can be when isolated from their natural co-nutrients and enriched and added to our daily food. Dr. Joseph Schroeder attempted to qualitatively measure the addictive properties of the Oreo cookie. In this study he had a mouse that was fed both cocaine and Oreo cookies and then placed each one at opposite ends of a maze. More often than not the mouse would gravitate towards the cookie over cocaine, suggesting that the combination of fat and sugar have more addictive properties than cocaine. In contrast, when mice were fed rice cakes and cocaine the mice would gravitate towards the cocaine, showing that not all food is addictive but some has the power to be more addictive than some of the most addictive drugs.
The problem with increasing our food consumption via addictive agents is that the food industry will enrich for these compounds at the expense of the nutrients that they are usually found with. For example, 150 years ago we would still eat sugar, but it would be found in its natural state in an orange, which also contains vitamin C, fiber and a variety of antioxidants. Sadly, today we consume our sugar that has been isolated from all of its associated nutrients to maximize the dopamine response and added to an orange flavored candy with no naturally containing nutrients. We are eating the equivalent of 19 oranges a day in added sugar, but consume less than 1 orange amount of fiber and vitamin C a day. Thereby, we keep eating foods that are high in addiction and calories, but low in nutrition causing an increase in our waistlines and medical bills.
Zija's Daily Tea contains the following natural ingredients, which help fight back against food cravings:
The yellow fruit Garnicia Cambogia increases the release of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which signals to the body that is satiated and helps block fat absorption to ensure that fat cells are used appropriately throughout the day for energy.
Bitter Melon controls appetite at the cellular level. It is enriched with four unique phytocompounds, which work collectively to increase the level of AMPK. AMPK aids in the uptake of sugar from the blood stream and signals to the body that it is full.
Astragalus Root acts as a cellular de-stressor and stimulates many enzymes that work to protect nucleic acid degradation, allowing cells to carry out metabolic functions more efficiently, such as helping the body recognize when it has had enough to eat.
