The Age of Carb Addiction

Obesity is rampant but you don’t have to be a victim

Alcoholism is baffling. It randomly it stalks its victims. Why can some people have one drink, walk away satisfied, while others — about 10% of Americans — behave in the opposite way?

A single cocktail stimulates the desire to keep drinking, until you’ve run out of money, time, or consciousness.

If only food addiction were as straightforward. Whereas one person can’t have an Oreo without devouring the package, another might eat three when they meant to eat one. Then there are those who eat an Oreo slowly and with little relish, and don’t eat another for a year.

Since people with food addiction are on a spectrum, just like people with alcoholism, figuring out if you have a problem can be tricky.

Alcoholism is well-established as a life threatening, progressive disease. Unfortunately, statistics betray a similar problem with carbs: they are driving obesity and diabetes to epidemic levels in modern America.

One of the enduring myths of alcoholism, in addition to the old-fashioned denigrations that it’s a “moral failing” is the concept of the romantic alcoholic who “drowns his sorrows” at the bar, because alcoholics feel deeper, more intensely, and are suffering more than the rest of us.

Aside from the pain of hangovers and addiction, this is bogus. Drinking excessively isn’t caused by pain and existential despair — it’s the result of a biochemistry.

Alcoholism has more in common with an allergy than a scene out of Wuthering Heights.The disease isn’t a personality problem, a dearth of happiness, or a need for literary fame.

The same is true with overeating: it’s biochemical, not moral. And it affects a much greater percentage of people.

If you wonder why someone you know who is obese can’t just “stop eating so much,” this is why: fat isn’t the result of laziness, genetic predisposition, or wanting to “drown our sorrows” in a milkshake. Instead, the obesity problem has mushroomed within a society doused in sugar and pizza.

Some people are carb sensitive, just like some people can’t handle liquor. Until fifty years ago, this wasn’t such a big deal, but now carbs are legal and virtually free on every street corner.

Betcha can’t eat just one.

A Sweet Tooth and a Sour Taste

When you hear the term “food addiction” it means carb addiction.

Rodent studies reveal an interesting perspective on addictive foods like potato chips and candy bars. Food addiction is the result of taste but the biochemistry includes the opioid system.

Some rats developed “neuroadaptations of the opioid system … following intermittent access to highly palatable food, which may be responsible for the development of binge-like eating.”

Overeating comes from a biochemical reaction, mostly relating to the way refined carbohydrates (this includes all forms of sugar) affect hormonal pathways via insulin secretion. Leptin, too, signals nutritional depletion and drives overeating.

Because insulin spikes tend to drive rather than satisfy hunger, eating refined carbs boosts hunger signals. Having a Snickers bar as an afternoon snack to tide you over till dinner will tend to cause more eating (especially of carbs) at dinner, not less.

This drive to eat more after consuming carbs — especially, but not limited to, the refined variety — varies among individuals but most people regularly exposed to refined carbs and sugar will react badly (just like most rats.)

How do we know most people are carb sensitive?

Because two-thirds of Americans are overweight, and a third are obese. Nearly half of Americans over 50 are either pre-diabetic or diabetic.

This is highly abnormal in human history. In fact, there is no precedent for such abysmal health. Obesity and diabetes are directly related to the modern diet, which is obscenely high in processed grains, sugar and other forms of readily available carbs, including modern fruits.

You Can’t Overeat Meat and Fat

If you overeat on fat, you’ll get nauseated — and that goes for avocados as well as ribeye steak. Overeating on protein is technically possible but it’s not satisfying and can lead to starvation.

“Rabbit starvation” is a known phenomenon from trying to subsist on rabbit meat, which is quite lean.

You can’t get addicted to protein and fat, but carbs are a very different story.

I do not believe food addiction is (usually) the result of emotional trauma, but let me explain.

Like alcohol, refined carbs and sugar are substances almost all of us are exposed to. Most people take their first drink in high school. Many respond with, “What’s the big deal?” Some — alcoholics — do not. They can get very, very drunk the first time they have a drink, or develop a taste for alcohol that develops into an enduring lifestyle.

There isn’t one type of alcoholic, but to varying degrees they seek out alcohol and commonly have too much. This is a result of a biochemical predisposition over which they have no control.

The same pattern occurs with carb junkies.

My childhood didn’t include many sweets, but from the time I can remember when I had one I wanted more. I asked for snacks, because I knew I could have fruit. I preferred cereal for breakfast. I overate on pancakes. I loved the rare Saturday my parents would pick up Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

I overate on mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving, etcetera.

I wasn’t eating because I was sad. I was choosing carbs because of a biochemical feedback loop. They became a comfort and a go-to with a very predictable result. I would feel momentarily satisfied.

But I am not particularly unusual, especially nowadays when refined carbs are everywhere. Almost everyone is susceptible to such substances.

Carbs are NOT an Essential Macronutrient

Taking a brief detour back in time to the Upper Paleolithic (Stone Age) era of 40,000 to 10,000 years BP, when we lived on ruminant animals for the most part, we can see that carbs were optional rather than necessary.

Wooly mammoths and other large herd animals were staple of our diet. They were enormous and full of calorie-dense fat. We followed them around, and paid homage to them in cave paintings. It wasn’t a Disneyland scenario; we didn’t do all those paintings because animals were cute and cuddly.

Those beasts were our sustenance, and we worshipped them. Early humans drew them on the walls of caves like Lascaux in southern France and Sierra de Capivara in Brazil. because we wanted to know every detail about them. Knowing our prey meant a better likelihood of a delicious meal of fat and meat and bones.

This isn’t to say that fruits and vegetables don’t have their place, and that whole grains aren’t healthy in moderation. However, they should be side dishes and limited. We ate carbs seasonally to supplement a meat diet. Fruits at that time, prior to genetic engineering, were small and far less sweet.

Archaeological evidence of plant consumption is more difficult to infer from the existing data; it is certain we ate plants, but the amount remains a mystery. Around 10,000 BP, diets worldwide shifted from gathering plant foods seasonally to cultivating them year-round.

We don’t have enough evidence to definitively conclude we ate a mostly carnivore diet, but we do know that we’ve eaten meat for tens of thousands of years, and our propensity for it (along with animal fats) probably helped us grow large brains.

Plant foods were scarce for most of our human history, so we had to rely on meat.

When grains became more predominant, about 12,000 years ago, we also shifted from hunting to animal husbandry. Grains and raising livestock supplied a steady food source; we settled down and turned from nomads into city-dwellers. Grain-based diets are often credited as the reason our human population exploded.

Some might say, grains were our first currency. We call money “bread” and “dough” for a reason.

Suffice to say there is substantial evidence for our meat-eating origins, with only a relatively recent dependence on cereals. Sugar has only been around for a few hundred years.

Biologically, we do not need carbohydrates. We can live almost entirely on fat and protein, and several populations such as Inuits and Greenlanders, have done so successfully.

Do We All Have Eating Disorders Now?

Our modern environment is flooded with sugar and refined carbohydrates. Such “staples” are government subsidizes and found everywhere:

— Schools, think chocolate milk and pizza

— Prisons, which run on cheap carbs like instant potatoes and rice

— Hospitals, well known for awful food

— The Military, where there are plenty of “choices” for hungry soldiers

— Fast food restaurants

— Convenience stores

— Speciality shops (doughnuts, cupcakes, ice cream, etc.)

It’s normal to eat these foods every day for most people.

The Way Out Isn’t Sexy

Few who are in the throes of addiction are likely to see it. That’s the “cunning and baffling” nature of alcoholism. It’s the reason we have a worldwide movement of 12-step groups, because addiction is wily foe that can only be defeated by a well-informed army.

With carb addiction, the problem is more widespread and more subtle, principally because eating sweets and carbohydrates is a daily ritual for most westerners. Eating processed carbs on a regular basis in America is entirely normalized.

So how do you escape?

The best solution is to cut carbs to a minimal part of the diet, and to completely banish processed and refined grains and sugars. You will not be missing out of depriving yourself of essential nutrients.

Eat meat and vegetables, and the occasional piece of fruit. Many people can also tolerate dairy products without trouble, although they are a class of foods dangerous people with certain conditions such as autoimmune disease.

This isn’t advice anyone really wants to follow. It takes the fun out of food. It’s possible to consider only having cake and ice cream once a year — on your birthday.

If you are triggered by carbs, a juicy rib-eye steak is a much better and healthier birthday treat.

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