Food addiction?

I recently came across this article after someone had mentioned it on Twitter. After childishly giggling about the author's name, I read through it with mixed feelings.

I can definitely identify with the section directly below. Like everyone, I could happily sit down to a bag of potato chips and polish off the entire thing without thinking much of it. I will start my binge thinking, "I'll just eat a few [insert allegedly-addictive food here]," and before I know it I've closed and reopened the bag several times with a guilty "just a few more."

Imagine a foot-high pile of broccoli, or a giant bowl of apple slices. Do you know anyone who would binge broccoli or apples? On other hand, imagine a mountain of potato chips or a whole bag of cookies, or a pint of ice cream. Those are easy to imagining vanishing in an unconscious, reptilian brain eating frenzy. Broccoli is not addictive, but cookies, chips, or soda absolutely can become addictive drugs.

... Rings a bell, doesn't it? We all have those foods which are drugs for us - for me, in addition to chips, or pretzels, or popcorn, it was fast food - greasy, salty, wonderful fast food, like McDonald's or Guthries. I certainly heard it calling to me from the roadside as I would try to drive home to "eat good" - sounds like an addict itching for a fix.

However, the following rubs me the wrong way. I think that it's appropriate to emphasize choice in the way you manage your own health, or weight, or obesity, if you like.

They would rather ignore this science. They have three mantras about food.

1. It's all about choice. Choosing what you eat is about personal responsibility. Government regulation controlling how you market food or what foods you can eat leads to a nanny state, food "fascists," and interference with our civil liberties.
2. There are no good foods and bad foods. It's all about amount. So no specific foods can be blamed for the obesity epidemic.
3. Focus on education about exercise not diet. As long as you burn off those calories, it shouldn't matter what you eat.

Unfortunately, this is little more than propaganda from an industry interested in profit, not in nourishing the nation.

Do We Really Have a Choice About What We Eat?

The biggest sham in food industry strategy and government food policy is advocating and emphasizing individual choice and personal responsibility to solve our obesity and chronic disease epidemic. We are told that if people just didn't eat so much, exercised more, and took care of themselves, we would be fine. We don't need to change our policies or environment. We don't want the government telling us what to do. We want free choice.

First off, this article just gives people an excuse to be lazy, kinda like the excuses the "fat gene" or "bad metabolism" provided in the past - people think "oh well, I'm stuck like this, so I might as well enjoy it while I can." There has to be some choice involved!

For instance, I'll freely admit that I am a recovering "addict" as it comes to eating - addicted to specific foods, or more broadly, to eating whatever I wanted in whatever quantity while being lazy about exercising. However, instead of attributing my obesity to some "addictive food," I flatly attribute it to my bad choices and my laziness. Acknowledging these things and embarking to change them is what has enabled me to completely devote myself to changing my life (and my weight). If I was back-of-my-mind-sabotaging myself all the time with thoughts of blaming my "addiction" on anything other than my own choices, I would've stayed on the same, unhealthy, unattractive path.

Second, the article belittles the three "mantras" above, describing them as propaganda. Now I won't go as far as to say that those mantras are fact, but do they not make at least a little common sense? #1 - would we really like to abandon personal responsibility for our person in favor of government responsibility? I mean I know we do it for everything else in our lives (sigh), but for our own bodies?? #2 - yes, there are good and bad foods. But you choose to eat them, and in what quantity. I may be drawn to eat more potato chips than I originally intended, but to blame the chip for being delicious and superior to any other food? No, I cannot. #3 - why not educate on both food and exercise? Giving more information is never the problem; however, misinformation like this article (absolving people from their own part of the guilt over eating themselves to death) is not the way to go.

Does my analysis of this article betray a lack of compassion on my part towards those with addictions in general, or just those who blame their struggle with weight on something else, instead of taking personal responsibility? Is it wrong to want to hold people accountable to the choices they make and the rewards and/or consequences that accompany them? Because I am in the midst of a bootstraps effort at turning my health and weight around, my personal responsibility for the results I see (either positive or negative) is of particular importance to me, but do others feel differently? Is it comforting to some to see this article's absolution? I don't want to be cavalier by demanding personal responsibility, because I know that addiction is a very real struggle for many people. I have felt the pull of addiction myself, but chose to turn away. I went back and found this from my first post in this blog, when I said I'm Tired... thought it was appropriate to this topic of discussion.

I'm tired of the addiction pulling me into its gravity.