Good Foods, Bad Foods by Natalie E West DCht, IICT
Good Foods, Bad Foods
I know it's not popular to come right out and say there is no such things as good and bad foods, but let's not kid ourselves and dance around the fiction that there's no such thing.
Yes, there are foods which strengthen and supply energy to your body—good foods. There are edible products that deplete and weaken your body rendering it more vulnerable to poor health—bad foods.
Which kind of foods do you really want to put in your body?
Processed foods, particularly highly processed foods, are wolves in sheep's clothing.
I think of them as edible products masquerading as food. They look like they're trying to play nice but they're really dangerous to your health and mental well-being.
They're designed and engineered to taste delicious and cause your brain to clamour for more. They ruthlessly sabotage any efforts you can make and then you wonder if there's something fundamentally wrong with you.
You wonder if you're lacking self-discipline and self-respect.
They can make you believe that white knuckling your way toward your goal is your only option. There's a lot of money at stake in the processed food industry.
Food chemists toil away in state-of-the-art laboratories and kitchens tinkering with texture, plus sugar, fat and salt ratios to make these edible products super palatable.
They bring in focus groups to taste and critique the products until they get the component parts just right.
Once they hit that magic combo of ingredients that send your taste buds and brain into the stratosphere of delight and desire, it's off to the advertisers to craft an enticing marketing campaign.
These so-called edibles are intentionally designed to hook and addict you without providing quality nutritional value, and sadly these foods are taking up now around 80% of daily intake.
What they do so well is deliver an out-sized hit of the feel-good neurotransmitter, dopamine, to your brain upon ingestion. This process, repeated over and over again, trains your brain to seek out these food products again and again.
Did you know that MRI scans of people's brains reveal that the same areas light up with activity in those addicted to cocaine as in those addicted to sugar?
Sadly, these very tasty edible products do not nourish your body's cells. They are the root cause of many 21st century ills, like mental health, obesity, heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
They undermine your health. While you know this intellectually, the foods you love and crave are deliciously addictive. They're easy to buy, cheap and often way too easy to consume.
Most of the items sold on the interior isles are engineered and processed in a factory, including the supposed "health" foods that sneakily claim no added sugar but are full of sugar from dates and other sweeteners manufactured from plants or chemicals.
Who intentionally desires less than optimal functioning?
Even though many of us slog through our days feeling sluggish, depleted, and tired, no one wants to feel less than alert and energetic.
I've never heard anyone insist that sub-par functioning was their preferred mode of operation. We are designed to want to eat food. It is part of our survival blueprint. But it's not a given that anything technically edible is worth eating.
Years of conditioning tell us food is love, comfort, entertainment, and reward. But when certain edible products are intentionally designed to give us out-sized dopamine hits, we're held hostage by our cravings and desires.
I'm here to help you get control of your cravings and desires.
Let me know you're ready to harness current brain and metabolic science to work in your favour. It is possible for you to change your relationship with food, your body and your weight at any age or stage of life.
Written by Natalie E West DCht, IICT
Instagram: @natalie.e.west
Published October 5th, 2024
