Ep 36- The TRUTH About Processed Foods Being Addictive

October 17,2024

There’s a lot of controversy around processed foods in binge eating recovery.

I am always an advocate for learning how to find moderation around all foods.

So how do we do this with processed foods?

Are they addictive?

Can you really eat processed foods intuitively?

Today I will cover…

• What are processed foods?

• How your thoughts and mindset contribute to food addiction

• Unraveling the study that sugar is more addictive than cocaine

• 3 factors that make you feel more addicted to processed foods

  ​We are talking today about a highly debated topic. Are processed foods addictive? There are so many different opinions in the binge eating world about what to do about processed foods. And so I'm going to talk to you about A few different considerations today in what I, of course, believe as the truth.

So, you might have the belief right now that processed foods are bad, we shouldn't eat them, they're not serving us or healthy in any way. But we first want to start, as always, by how do we even define what a processed food is? What does it mean for something to fall in the processed food category?

So, a processed food, the definition of it is any food that has been modified from its original state. So, we typically think of processed foods of things like Doritos, ice cream candy, like clearly those did not grow out of the ground, right? But what if you took potatoes and you sliced them really thin?

You break, baked them or fried them with lots of chemicals such as oil, salt, 10 different spices, and then you made potato chips. Is that now a processed food or not processed food? By definition, it is processed. Now, what if you mix honey and cream to make ice cream? Is that processed? Honey is a whole food.

You can get raw honey that's not really processed. Does that make it? Healthy or unhealthy? We can't really know.

Let's think about some other foods that are processed. Dried fruit, refried beans, olive oil, protein bars, protein powders, any powder for that matter. So if you take a greens powder or some sort of supplement that's a powder, that is processed.

Any sort of vitamin that you take that exists, that is processed. Vitamins do not grow out of the ground. We have to process things to get them. If you take a piece of chicken and you put any seasonings or marinades on it and cook it, you have now a got a piece of processed chicken. And you might be thinking, well, it's the food with all the extra sugars and fats.

So what happens if you take a smoothie and you add some extra fruit to it or some extra honey? Is it now processed? And you add some extra fats. You add some olive oil to your smoothie or nut butter maybe would be more like it. It's all getting broken down, mixed together. Does it now become a processed food?

Think about your classic fruit and nut granola bars. Those things all started as things that grew out of the ground. But they are still processed. So I could go on and on, but you get the point that a food being processed is not a bad thing. And this idea that processed foods are things you should cut out of your diet and shouldn't eat, it can't really be defined.

We can't really put a black and white definition on them, nor should we. Food is not meant to be black and white. There's always a spectrum that exists there.

We have also been processing food for thousands of years. Think about canned foods. Canned foods are processed and that is a very useful way of preserving food.

We probably as a society would not have done so well had we not discovered how to can food or how to refrigerate food. That is preserving it. That is processing our food in a certain way where it might not naturally be refrigerated.

So I actually did a little research and found that people have been consuming sugar from sugarcane for over 10, 000 years. So clearly it is not the sugar itself that is the problem, it is the way we are consuming that sugar that is.

So when you are struggling with binge eating, that tends to look like trying to be good all week, in quotes, and then saying screw it and binging 10 times the amount of sugar you would have had if you had just enjoyed a little each day.

I want you to think about how you show up in the world and how you eat when you believe you are addicted to certain foods or all foods. So go with a little thought experiment of me here. I want you to spend a minute and tell yourself, How addicted you are to water. That you can never get enough water.

That once you have that first sip of it, you're flooded with desire for more. That you just can't stop drinking water. Once you start, it's over for you. You just keep going. You have no control over drinking water, and you always want more of it. How much do you want water right now? Like, I'm getting thirsty!

Because this is the power of our thoughts in the story we tell ourself. When we are telling ourself all of these same thoughts that I just told you about water around food, which we often do, we are going to act as someone that is addicted.

So it's really important to tell yourself the opposite thoughts, that you are in charge, that you do know how to stop, that this food is not in charge of you, just like water is not in charge of you. We know we can stop when we want to.

Now, a lot of people think about, well, what about all the research? All the research says this, this, and this. Knowing what the research says is not going to make you eat any less of it or make you stop binge eating.

Most of the people in my world, they have the general knowledge on nutrition and what's good for them and what's maybe less nutritious and they want to have less often. And in fact, whenever we start to go down these deep, dark research holes of what are ultra processed foods doing to us and what happens when we eat sugar, how is sugar killing us?

What I find tends to happen is this just makes you so much more anxious around food. It makes you so much more fearful, gives you so much more food stress. And then when, if you do eat it, you feel extremely guilty, extremely ashamed, which all of this just leads to more binge eating. So the more we are scared of these foods, I mean it might temporarily prevent you from eating them, but long term most of us want to be able to like enjoy a piece of birthday cake at a birthday party or have a cookie around Christmas time.

So all this excess guilt and fear around this food is just going to lead to even more binge eating.

Now people will often quote this study where sugar is more addictive than cocaine They think, well what about the science that shows this?

Now, there's a few important things to know about this study.

When this study was done, these rats were in a starved state. Okay, so the rats were not getting their, an adequate amount of food and calories in their day to day. Now, think about this if you were dieting or restricting your calories. You are also going to feel more addicted to sugar and carbs. This is a normal biological response.

This is not because sugar is addicting. This is because our brain loves to have sugar when we are hungry. This is what helps us stay alive because things like protein and fat are a little bit harder for us to digest. So if we can get that quick hit of sugar, that oftentimes means better survival.

So, if you went all day without water and you always drink a lot of water at the end of the day, you wouldn't say, man, I just have this horrible addiction to water.

I feel like I can't go without it. And once I start at the end of the day, I just can't stop. I just keep drinking it. It'd be like, well, of course that happens. You haven't had water all day. So this is why it's so important to make sure you are not restricting because so many studies show that when people are in this restrictive state, when people are dieting, They are much more likely to feel out of control more likely to show obsessive behaviors around food, much more likely to binge eat, and I'll have to do a full episode on this because, you know, this is a very well proven thing.

So, if you are in a starved state like you are these rats, yeah, you might choose sugar over cocaine because your body needs food.

There was also another study that showed, When women were deprived of chocolate for a week, they had more cravings and ate more chocolatey foods when the study was over than those who weren't deprived.

Now thinking about the rat example again, I also want you to remember that we are not rats. We have an extremely complicated brain with very intricate psychology that has exponentially more factors in deciding what to eat. So sure, if we were just to follow our primal animalistic instincts we might have, we might go for sugar more often.

Lucky for us, we also have this other part of our brain, our prefrontal cortex, that rats don't. Which is allowing us to make logical decisions that feel good and see the nuances of eating different foods. So this is the part of our brain. That can tell us, hey, you're probably gonna feel pretty shitty if you eat 10 doughnuts right now, and you'd probably feel a lot better if you had a bowl of yogurt and fruit instead.

We have this logical part of our brain and that is the part of us that controls our actions. So we always get to choose. What we want to do.

There is never a time where you are completely out of control of your actions It is still always a conscious choice.

Now if all processed foods were truly addictive No one would be able to eat them in amounts that feel good Everyone in the world would binge on them to the point of extreme physical discomfort and that's just not true There are plenty people that I see every day and that exist all over the world that eat processed foods in moderation.

You'll see people, they go out to lunch, they have a bag of chips, they eat their bag of chips, and then they move on. And they don't go obsessively buying 10 more bags of chips. That's what someone would do if they were addictive. But they just stop. They feel satisfied and they move on.

My brothers are natural eaters.

I always love using them as an example, and I have frequently seen them leave like three chips left in the bag, or they leave like a fourth of a cup of cereal. And I remember my mom always getting so mad at them growing up because they're like, why didn't you just finish off the box of cereal? But because they didn't want anymore.

They're not addicted to it. They are able to stop, not because they are special beings, but because the food itself is not addictive and they're having certain thoughts that are not addicting around food. food. I will often have just a couple squares of chocolate and leave the rest of the bar behind.

Maybe you do this too. Or sometimes I'll have just like a couple bites of ice cream, a small scoop. Ice cream honestly isn't my favorite, so I don't have it that often. But some people would say, no, ice cream is addictive. It has so much sugar, so much fat, and that's just our brain is built to be addicted to that.

Well, not for me and not for a lot of people. It is inherently not true that these foods are addictive, otherwise every single person would have to be addicted to them. In order for something to be a fact, it needs to be a hundred percent true.

In order for gravity to exist, everyone had to agree, yes, gravity exists. That's what makes it a fact. So in a few other examples, you might also see kids forgetting about the candy bag, right? And then they just go play with their toys. So, additionally, if all of the processed foods were addictive, We would all be obsessed with every single one of those processed foods, and that's not true.

So some people really enjoy ice cream, and maybe they feel, you know, a little bit more lovingly towards ice cream they enjoyed a bit more. But like I mentioned, I personally just don't really like ice cream that much. Like, I'll have it on occasion. I'm not saying it's not good, but if ice cream itself were addictive, then everyone would be addicted to it.

Gummy bears, which are literally pure processed sugar, I think are disgusting. So if processed foods were addicted, I would be addicted gummy bears because that's what the science says is that pure processed sugar is addicting. No, it's not. Cookies and brownies. Those are something that I love, but some people would just prefer the ice cream or cake instead.

So it's not that big of a deal that there's cookies and brownies around for them. Chips, I could really take or leave. Now what's interesting, I'm not sure what the exact book is, so like don't quote me on this, but I think it's called like The Dorito Effect. I know that there's some book out there that talks about the way our foods are engineered to make them taste amazing.

Now, just because something tastes amazing does not mean we can be addicted to it. Just because we love fuzzy warm blankets doesn't mean we are addicted to fuzzy warm blankets. We can enjoy things, we can have things taste good without being addicted to them. Now, my point being with this is, You know, they said that they, Doritos are some food that was like the most chemically engineered food So they could be the most addictive food ever.

Now, I hate Doritos. I think Doritos, like the powder on them is gross. I think the oil tastes so fake. I just don't really like the overall taste. I think it's gross. So not true that Doritos are inherently addicting because I don't like them. I would be okay never eating another Dorito in my entire life.

But I want to remind you that if you have a dieters brain right now if you have the good bad food labels You probably aren't thinking about food this way I did not always think that gummy bears weren't addicting or ice cream wasn't that good because when I was operate from the scarcity dieting mindset I thought all foods were good, and I wanted them all, all the time.

But once we become a confident natural eater, you're able to actually tune into food preferences. And the great thing about food preferences is we learn we don't actually prefer everything. We don't actually want everything. It's not all that good.

So there's three factors that might make processed foods feel more addictive.

Now notice how I'm saying feel more addictive, not become more addictive. Because addictive is not an inherent trait that these foods have. It is more a feeling that sometimes is created for us based on some of these things.

So the first factor that might make processed foods feel more addictive is how we are eating them.

So if you are eating these foods when you are super freaking hungry, and you try to stop at just three Cheez Its when you haven't eaten all day, it's gonna be kind of hard because again your brain's gonna go, ooh, yum, carbs, sugar, fats, like we need that stuff. We're trying to keep you alive here. So it's gonna send out a desire for more.

Now, you don't necessarily have to listen to that desire, but that can kind of Feel a little out of control at times if you're really hungry. So I'd recommend making sure you're not overly hungry That doesn't mean you can never feel hunger I do teach you how to sit with an appropriate amount of hunger in my program But we need to have not overly amounts of hunger in order to make sure we're eating these foods in a way that feels good.

If you're eating these foods with the purpose of numbing out how you were feeling or trying to escape an emotion. So if you go and eat ice cream because you're trying to stop feeling sad You are going to feel addicted to that food because you are not going to find happiness anywhere in that ice cream.

You might find a little joy, like, not to say ice cream isn't delicious, but true happiness does not come from ice cream. It comes from your thoughts. It comes from choosing to think happy thoughts. So if you are looking for a solution where it does not exist, you might feel like, oh my gosh, I can't stop eating this because you're continuing to look for

for the solution to sadness in ice cream. It's not going to work.

Finally, if you eat these foods when you're in this urge frenzy where you just feel overcome with desire because you formed a habit around these foods, it's going to make them hard to eat in moderation. What I mean by this is, let's say you have a habit of every single night at 8 p. m you just go and binge and you eat half the cabinet, you eat all your processed snacks because you think they're so delicious and you've Told yourself they're off limits all day long, and so now you wanna eat them all.

If you do that every night, you have now formed a habit around it, and you're going to get the urge to do this. Even if you're giving yourself permission for food. Even if you are giving yourself food and making sure you're not hungry, you might still get this urge. The reason we don't want to be eating these foods in an urge, frenzy is because our brain is not going to really be satisfied until we have an extremely large amount of them. So we can get rid of your urges and how we do that is by stopped acting on them. If you go back to, gosh, it's like one of the first few episodes of this podcast. I talk a lot more about urges and I also have a free guided urge audio in the show notes.

That you can use that's going to walk you through and give you very specific tools on what to do when you get an urge. But if you feel like, oh my gosh, I'm just always out of control because I get these crazy urges. That is not the food's fault. The food itself is not addicting. Your brain has just formed a really strong habit around them. But luckily, that habit can be broken.

So the second reason that you might have an urge feel addicted to these processed foods is because of your thoughts while you're eating them. So in the beginning of this episode, when I talked about trying to make yourself addicted to water, like by thinking those thoughts, all of those thoughts you want to be very aware of.

So do not tell yourself you're just addicted to them. Do not tell yourself, well, I just have an addictive personality. This is who I am. Because that's not true. You can change this. This is not a stuck thing. This is something you can absolutely do. Change your brain around because I have done it and all of my clients have done it too.

So you want to be telling yourself helpful thoughts such as, I am in charge. I get to decide how much I eat. This food is not addictive. This food might be yummy, but I can always choose to stop at any point in time. I am the CEO of myself, not the food. I get to choose. All of those thoughts super useful to say to yourself instead.

Now the third factor that might make processed foods feel more addictive is how often you eat them. So if you're eating these foods extremely frequently, you might start to want them more. I am not going to sit here and ignore. The fact that sometimes, if we're eating a lot of sugar, our Brain and body starts to get used to that, and it does have an impact on our hunger signals, our fullness signals, and a lot of our other body processes.

Now, I'm not talking, excessively is not having a cookie every day, or having some chocolate and having a bag of chips at lunch. That is not excessive. What I am talking about is if someone's diet is Over 90 percent highly manufactured. This is where we actually start to see more of those negative effects start to kick in.

But the problem is most people think, Oh my gosh, if I have this, you know, one bag of chips, like I'm being super bad and I'm eating processed foods and I'm ruining my health, which it just really isn't true. So what I mean by this, what this looks like, is if someone is eating frozen waffles from a package with syrup at breakfast, and then white bread with sandwich meat and Kraft cheese and Doritos at lunch, and then a candy bar for a snack, and then they're stopping at McDonald's, getting a soda for dinner, and then having a late night snack of mac and cheese with hot Cheetos.

Yes, you might be running into some issues then, because that's when your body starts to expect this type of food. There is such a thing as true food addiction, where Your brain and body get really used to these, again, this high level of salt and sugar and fat and in this food, the processed foods often contain more of it, but this is a pretty rare phenomenon.

Like, a lot of people come to me thinking they're addicted to food, and And I'm like, no, no, no, we can do so, so, so, so, so much before we ever have to address, like, if you're actually having a biological impact from these foods, like, yes, it impacts your body, but the level that it's doing so at is at a much smaller level than you might imagine.

And if you start to eat mostly whole foods, your body actually learns to expect that type of food and genuinely craves it. So, the reason I don't want to eat gummy bears all day long is because I love feeling my best. I feel so freaking good all day, every day, now that I'm not binge eating, now that I listen to my body, it is amazing.

And you might surprise yourself on how little you actually want that other food when you become this natural, confident eater.

So, to wrap up, I want you to start really questioning your thoughts on processed foods Because there's really no one definition of what processed foods are, and they can all be included in part of a very healthy, natural eater lifestyle.

So go out there, enjoy your frickin foods, and stop feeling so guilty all the time for them. And also know if you need more help learning to include these foods in moderation, this is exactly what I teach you in my Confident Eater program. And you can always find more about the current opportunities to work with me down in the show notes.

Talk to you next week.