Re-wiring the brain off bad eating habits

[mook]

Been hearing a lot about David Kessler's new book, "The End of Overeating." One major point he makes is that neural paths in our brain are permanently wired to desire specific foods that deliver combinations of salt/fat/sugar. So we instantly drool at the site of a chocolate chip cookie or a french fry like a Pavlov dog.

If "re-programming" the brain is the ultimate goal, it seems to me the obvious solution is to create an odorless spray mist out of something like diluted ipecac that induces a slight sense of nausea when combined with food. (Note--it needn't induce vomit, just the feeling of slight nausea.)

Spray it on french fries. Then let yourself eat as many as you want, whenever you want. If you start feeling sick every time you put a french fry in your mouth, pretty soon you're body will want to stop eating fries.

I went from 190lbs to 150lbs in three months living in Mexico because everything I ate made me sick there. Even after returning to the US, it was a year before I could look at a taco without my stomach churning.

Obviously, losing 40lbs in three months isn't the goal. Re-wiring the brain to hate foods which are unhealthy is. Why not fight the food industry by creating a Pavlovian revulsion to the truly damaging foods?

I love chocolate chip cookies. The smell, the taste, the warm chocolate combined with a cold glass of milk...ahhhh. But if they made me feel like I did when I was in Mexico, you couldn't force me to eat them.

I guess this comes across as an endorsement of bulimia, which it isn't. Unlike bulimia, the nausea spray I'm describing would have to be nearly instant (within a minute or two) so that it reaches the brain before feelings of satiation do. (Bulimics experience the joy of eating, enjoy satiation, then induce vomiting quickly afterward.)

Ideally the nausea would last from a minute after eating until about 20 minutes later.

It'd be critical that the spray is odorless. Otherwise the brain would just be wired to reject the scent of the spray instead of the smell of the food you wish to eliminate from your diet.

Is this kind of aversion therapy ever done? I know in the past people have done some crazy things to treat alcoholism/heavy drug use.

But what about training the mind (and therefore the body) to have a slight sense of revulsion every time a specific "bad" food is near by?

 

[Daniel E.]

Why not use positive reinforcement of eating healthy foods, like the joy of mindful eating?

Aversion therapy has been mostly relegated to history -- for good reason:

http://forum.psychlinks.ca/cbt-cogn.../8561-self-administered-aversion-therapy.html

As I mention in that thread, there is a good article by the APA. It mentions how the unsuccesses of aversion therapy helped researchers focus more on the underlying stressors that contribute to relapse:

Maybe one day it will be considered one of the great serendipities of health science: In the 1970s, psychologist G. Alan Marlatt, PhD, and colleagues were studying aversion therapy for people who had problems with alcohol. When people relapsed despite the aversions, the researchers asked them a lot of questions about what happened. The answers revealed common factors that put a person at high risk of relapse.

At the top of that list were negative emotional states. Depression, anger, anxiety, frustration or boredom seemed to catapult the abstinent person back into drinking. The researchers thought that if they could help patients recognize their high-risk situations, they could help prevent relapse. And they had a more revolutionary idea: They might help patients recover from relapses once they happened.

Thus began the gestation of "Relapse Prevention Therapy" (RP) which today is on the short list of scientifically validated psychosocial treatments for substance abuse. Its effect is "pretty potent," says Lisa Onken, PhD, head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Behavioral Treatment Development Branch, although the work on understanding and refining it is far from finished. It's causing particular excitement for its apparent utility with cocaine abuse, an area where just a few years ago there were no successful treatments.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun01/relapse.aspx

Been hearing a lot about David Kessler's new book, "The End of Overeating." One major point he makes is that neural paths in our brain are permanently wired to desire specific foods that deliver combinations of salt/fat/sugar. So we instantly drool at the site of a chocolate chip cookie or a french fry like a Pavlov dog.

Yes, I liked his message, too. And I can demonstrate the salt theory if you give me a bag of potato chips

Another book I like, Calm Energy, shows why mood and energy level is a another big factor:

Many people aren't aware of the importance of this low-energy state as a cause of overeating, but this is often the case. The so-called crises of these dieters all occurred in the afternoon and evening, times when energy begins to decline for most people. The average relapse crisis for these subjects occurred at 4:34 P.M...[They] ate something and felt energized and less anxious.

Calm Energy: How People Regulate Mood with Food and Exercise

...to treat alcoholism/heavy drug use.

Yes, and some of the inherent limitations of Antabuse:

Antabuse serves merely as physical and psychological deterrent to someone trying to stop drinking. It does not reduce the person's craving for alcohol, nor does it treat any alcohol withdrawal symptoms.

The effectiveness of antabuse in helping someone quit drinking depends on the person's continued use of medication. Because antabuse is administered in a daily pill, people can merely stop taking the drug and begin drinking a few days later.

However, research in Europe, where antabuse is much more widely used than in the United States, has shown that long-term use of antabuse is very effective in helping people stop drinking, producing abstinence rates of 50 percent. The longer people take antabuse, the more effective it is, because they develop a "habit" of not drinking, research revealed.

http://alcoholism.about.com/od/meds/a/antabuse.htm

But what about training the mind (and therefore the body) to have a slight sense of revulsion every time a specific "bad" food is near by?

Lots of things can work in the short term, e.g. the "banana diet" craze that hit Japan a few years ago. For the long term, it's a different story.

For one thing, people tend to crave foods that are seen as "bad" or otherwise off-limits.

 

[mook]

I've read about those forms of aversion therapy. I'd argue that what I'm suggesting isn't nearly as drastic. The point isn't to try to overindulge or induce extreme nausea to make people never eat a french fry again. It's pretty easy to see how that sort of treatment can lead to severe depression.

I'm suggesting something much more subtle. Much the way the food industry subtly induces us to eat more and more unhealthily with flavor signals (as described by Kessler), use a spray to create a subtle association between (say) the smell and texture of french fries and a feeling of nausea.

I'm telling you, there were few foods I loved more than tacos before I went to Mexico, and few foods I hate more now. Similarly, I think that's why so many have a revulsion to tequila--it's stronger and more unique flavor is easier to associate with a bad drinking experience than, say, gin or vodka.

Believe me, I understand the positive benefits of mindful eating. I'm a great case study of it myself.

But there are always going to be certain foods that if you put around me, my mind goes out the window. Rather than telling myself, "Think harder about something else!" I'd rather get at and defeat the core problem--the hard wiring in my brain that associates those foods with pleasure.

Funny enough--Kessler himself sites a strawberry ice cream study that seems to justify my idea. Here's a brief summary:

The study, designed to test the consequences of false memory, involved 131 students who completed a questionnaire on their food preferences and experiences. They were asked what experiences they had with food when they were younger, such as whether they "had a corndog at a baseball game" or "ate a piece of banana cream pie." After their answers were recorded, Loftus, University of California, Irvine, and Bernstein, Univeristy of Washington, gave participants what they were told was a computer-generated analysis of their supposed "true" preferences, including a general childhood like of pizza or dislike of spinach. Forty-seven of the students were given a false analysis that included how they had become ill after eating strawberry ice cream as a child.

"You essentially tell them falsely what their data means," said Loftus a Past President of APS. "To insure that they process their analysis, we get them to dwell on the list."

On a second questionnaire, after being given several minutes to ponder their "true" preferences, participants were asked to rate their preference of several foods on an eight-point scale. Nearly 20 percent of the 47 participants, who noted no dislike for strawberry ice cream during the initial questionnaire, confirmed that they would prefer not to eat it in the future.

(I can't post the link as I'm too new here. I found it by googling "strawberry ice cream psychology experiment" and clicking the second result.

 

[Daniel E.]

Here's the link:

APS Observer - You Hate Strawberry Ice Cream

Funny enough--Kessler himself sites a strawberry ice cream study that seems to justify my idea.

It's an interesting experiment about memory rather than food per se. They did something similar with deviled eggs in an episode of Scientific American Frontiers. Alan Alda (the host of the show) was the guinea pig.

 

[Daniel E.]

But there are always going to be certain foods that if you put around me, my mind goes out the window.

What about the times your mind didn't go out the window?

 

[mook]

It's an interesting experiment about memory rather than food per se. They did something similar with deviled eggs in an episode of Scientific American Frontiers. Alan Alda (the host of the show) was the guinea pig.

I'll have to check that out. Yeah, the intent of the experiment was memory. But it's still fascinating to think that people were so influenced about their personal flavor preferences by something so incredibly subtle. It really makes me wonder if the problem with using aversion therapy has been that researchers have been using a big sledgehammer once when a small, frequent nudge could be more effective.

I mean, what if this spray induced just a slight sense of nausea for a few moments over the course of a month or two. Give the brain time to re-wire itself. After all, most people who try Coke the first time hate it. It's only after the mind is conditioned to expect a caffeine and sugar rush do people start to really love it. So if it takes several interactions to build a strong bond, it seems natural that it'd take several interactions to destroy it.

Man, I wish I were an academic trying to think up something to study.

 

[Daniel E.]

IMHO, such thinking is a side effect of focusing too much on dieting, e.g. when women go on diets, they often go from 2000 calories a day to 1500 calories a day. So the obsession with calories is understandable.

In contrast:

http://forum.psychlinks.ca/dieting-nutrition-and-weight-management/17427-lose-weight-like-a-guy.html

http://forum.psychlinks.ca/dieting-...ement/22947-how-i-lost-5-pounds-in-tokyo.html

 

[mook]

Yeah, I don't really obsess over calories. Frankly, I'm just feeling annoyed to learn how much the food industry manipulates consumers.

I just know if I went back to McDonalds a few times, those jerks would get me back in a cycle where I was eating there two or three times a week. I'd just love to undo the wires in my brain that instinctively tell me such behavior is a good idea.

 

[Daniel E.]

There are groups like Center for Science in the Public Interest that do a good job of informing consumers, such as about the misrepresentations in marketing for processed foods:

Nutrition Action Healthletter

A while back, they had as their cover story the sodium content of salad dressing.

 

[Daniel E.]

This isn't aversion therapy, but it is aversive:

McDonald’s Hamburgers: Almost Entirely Indestructible -- Grub Street New York

 

[Daniel E.]

I saw the article below in Oprah's magazine while waiting in line at Walmart
It reiterates my first point about mindful eating:

Meditation for Weight Loss
Oprah.com

Why It Works
It's hard to believe that anything could quell a late-night Rocky Road craving besides the cold, creamy stuff. But with enough practice, meditative techniques can kill that mindless urge to eat. Whenever you eye the breadbasket or pop open a bag of pretzels, a brief breathing exercise will help clear your head: Try counting your breaths up to four (innn, one, innn, two...), and then ask yourself, "Am I hungry, or am I eating for some other reason?" You build this habit the way you build a muscle, says Nina Smiley, PhD, who runs a four-day mindful eating retreat at the Mohonk Mountain House in upstate New York. Eventually, eating becomes a choice rather than a thoughtless habit.

How It Works
Breathing exercises can be combined with other techniques that help you reconnect to your physical self. "Most of us inhabit our bodies without really feeling them," Smiley says. She asks guests at her retreat to rate their hunger level from one to ten every time they eat, to practice tuning in to their natural cues. She also asks them to keep a food journal, in which they write down what they eat, when they eat it, and (most important) how they're feeling at that moment. Soon they should start to see patterns and change their behavior. For example, if you eat cookies simply to reward yourself, you might consider an alternative prize, like taking a candlelit bath. To book a retreat, visit Mohonk.com.