Last week, I stumbled across an article on The Guardian
website in which George Monbiot sheds light on the rapidly increasing body of
evidence citing junk food as a cause for Alzheimer's disease. He alludes to an
article featured in the latest issue of the New Scientist as well as the
“dozens of papers” that he’s read on the subject, and goes on to elucidate why Alzheimer's
could very well be a “catastrophic impact of the junk food industry”.
Whilst the possibility doesn’t faze me in the slightest, I’m
aware that many of my assumptions about the effects of diet on cognitive
performance are based primarily on intuition and gut instinct rather than any
scientific findings that I’ve come across or any deep scientific understanding
that I have of nutrition. Still, my own personal experience has affirmed time
and time again that what you eat is what you are; food inevitably shapes you,
not just physically but mentally as well, and the ever-expanding plethora of
research continues to espouse this notion.
What I appreciate most about Monbiot’s article is his
readiness to discuss the psychological dimensions of obesity. Very early on, he
draws attention to the fact that the excessive consumption of junk food isn’t
merely a symptom of poverty, ignorance, or sheer indifference, as conventional
wisdom might have us believe, but often stem from deep-rooted psychological
issues such as food addiction and disordered eating, which can affect people
from all backgrounds.
He likens overeating to alcoholism and drug dependency (something
I discuss in my previous post on sugar), reminding us that addiction is
debilitating (and possible) in all forms regardless of the substance that’s
being abused. Yet, the former tends not to incite the same degree of sympathy as
the latter, largely due to the misguided stigma and uncertainty that’s associated
with food addiction, which Monbiot describes as a “form of snobbery”.
For some, an addiction to food is a genuinely difficult
concept to fathom, since eating is such a natural and necessary part of everyday
life that one might struggle to comprehend how something so primal could become
an obsession. But negative and self-destructive behaviour can form in any area
of our lives, surrounding any activity, and even the most positive and
purposeful actions have the capacity to become detrimental if we allow them to.
Whilst I understand the reluctance to pathologise every undesirable
and uncomfortable state that we find ourselves in, I do think it’s important
not to automatically attribute overeating to greed or ignorance. It's easy to simplify things, and perhaps for some it does boil down to discipline, but for many, it is a deep-seated psychological or emotional issue that impedes their daily
life, and it’s crucial for us to acknowledge this so as to deal with it compassionately
and effectively.
When it comes to the topic of obesity and its dire health consequences,
the prevalence of food addiction truly ought to be part of the conversation, not
solely for the purpose of addressing a major cause for this epidemic but also to
help de-stigmatise and demystify the problem so that people can deal with it candidly rather than suffer in silence under a veil of shame.
Suffering from an eating disorder such as overeating or food
addiction is devastating but is merely exacerbated by the lack of understanding
and support surrounding it. I hope that we continue to dismantle the taboo nature
of this disease by bringing the issue to the forefront.
