Why Do We Overeat?

I thought I'd take a closer look at some of the reasons we overeat.

People who follow my other blog will know that I strongly believe that those of us that overeat are food addicts.

Many people who overeat do so because they are slaves to dopamine and get their strongest dopamine response from calorie-dense foods. Food manufacturers exploit this mercilessly by adding flour, oil and sugar to processed foods ... then banging in one final nail with the addition of salt (for taste, of course).

For those of you unfamiliar with dopamine, this is the chemical responsible for pleasure. It is released when we eat and when we have sex. We have also become pretty adept at artificially inducing dopamine release with the recreational drugs that the underground chemists amongst us have so cleverly cooked up.

And of course, for the more law-abiding, you can always settle for good old-fashioned booze, coffee or cigarettes.

Dopamine release obviously happens for a reason. Our population growth, for example, may not have been quite so prolific without this wondrous chemical working its magic. In fact, if you stop to think about it, why would anyone go to all that bother, if there wasn't a dopamine bone at the end of the rainbow?

But, as is usually the case with us humans, we have gone to extremes in our zeal to over-indulge our senses.

Which brings me back to over-eating. We eat too much because that is the way we have evolved. Years ago, in millenia gone by, food wasn't perhaps quite so conveniently abundant as it is today. So you pretty much had to grab what you could get, when you could get it. If you didn't, then maybe you might have been prejudicing your survival and we couldn't have that.

So we adapted to this inconsistency of food supply by ensuring that, when food was available, we got our fill with interest! Human calorie camels!

Today the only thing that's changed is scarcity ... there is none. For most people in developed countries, food is available, inexpensive and convenient. And loaded with empty calories! And as a result, we just keep flooding our little brains with as much dopamine as we can.

I think we might even be oblivious to this biological imperative. Sharks are not the only creature known for feeding frenzies.

But it could also be argued that addiction is not the only driver of over-indulgence. What about emotional eating? Most of us have issues ... and food provides temporary comfort. OK, maybe that's our old friend dopamine weaving her magic again.

Or how about boredom? Or habit? Maybe. After all when we catch ourselves over-eating it does seem pretty mindless.

Maybe it's "true" physiological hunger. We may be overfed, but we're also probably undernourished because, for some of us at least, what nutrition do we get from icecream, chocolate, biscuits and Mickey-D's?

What I have observed in myself has nothing to do with real hunger, or lack of nutrients. I eat a wide variety of organic foods and my habits aren't particularly quirky, although I won't go near liver!

But I eat plenty of veg, fruits, nuts, fish, berries, unprocessed grains ... as well as the odd chicken breast, steak, or omelette. Grass-fed, free-range, organic everything ... it can't possibly be malnutrition for me.

But I still have moments where I could eat an entire wild salmon, or a whole bag of organic carrots, or 6 pears at a sitting!

That's narrows things down for me to "emotional" eating and flat-out addiction.

And discipline and moderation seem like ridiculous concepts for me in my battle to combat the siren call of dopamine.

I know I'm not alone in feeling this way ... so tell me how it is for you. What are your thoughts? Are you "addicted" to nutritious "healthy" food, or just calorie-dense rubbish with no nutritional value whatsoever?

Go ahead ... post a comment and let us know your own insight into this universal affliction. Food addicts need more direction than just moderation, discipline and restraint.

Or are we just weak and pathetic?

Your views please?