498: Breaking Food Addiction with Dr. Vera Tarman
Age Less / Live More
Lucas Rockwood
4.8 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2022
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
People often say things like, “I'm addicted to chocolate” or “I can’t live without ice cream.” And sometimes it’s true. Modern food is processed, packaged and concentrated in ways that light up our dopamine and endorphin receptors just like drugs; and yes, psychological and physiological addictions are very common. If you’re addicted to cigarettes, the clear solution is to stop. That’s not easy, but at least the goal is clear. If you’re addicted to food, you have to learn to manage your addiction, and this is why it can be such a challenge to overcome. On this week’s podcast, you’ll meet a medical doctor and recovered food addict herself.
Learn
- How food addiction can affect people of normal weight too
- When have your food habits turned into an addiction?
- Sweet vs. savory, men vs. women, breaking the cycle
- Why cheat days are impossible for addicts
- How to quit some food, but eat freely with others
Links
Dr Tarman’s Site
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Dr. Tarman is a food addiction expert, who writes, speaks and treats people who suffer from sugar addiction, food addiction, and who seek food recovery. She is the author of Food Junkies: The Truth About Food Addiction, and Food Junkies: Recovery from Food Addiction.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Everyone knows that cigarettes are addictive and many people joke that food is addictive as well, |
| 0:09.4 | but many people think of it like a joke. They say if I have just one potato chip, |
| 0:13.3 | I have to finish the whole bag because it's so addicting. The reality is in the same way that |
| 0:19.0 | big tobacco knows that their product is addictive and potentially fatal. Big food knows the same |
| 0:24.8 | thing. In fact, big food is actually engineering their food deliberately to be more and more |
| 0:30.2 | addictive with every passing year, with flavors and additives and other weird chemicals that trigger |
| 0:37.6 | dopamine, allergic pathways, and the idea is to try to elicit that same kind of craving reward |
| 0:43.2 | response that you would get from something like a cigarette or another drug. And this all sounds |
| 0:47.4 | really nefarious. And to some extent, it is. And the place where many people jump to right |
| 0:54.0 | away is regulation. Tobacco is regulated. Let's regulate big food. And I think on its head, |
| 0:59.5 | that sounds really smart, but in reality, that's way too complex and way too troubling to try to |
| 1:06.4 | implement. Right now, for example, New Zealand is trying to eliminate cigarettes from their country. |
| 1:11.7 | I think this will go very, very poorly. I think it's a terrible idea. I don't want anybody in New |
| 1:16.0 | Zealand to smoke, but here's the problem. Anyone born after 2008 won't be allowed to buy cigarettes. |
| 1:21.4 | Now on its head, that sounds really great. But what about that same kid born after 2008, can they buy |
| 1:28.0 | Coca-Cola? What about alcohol? What about hard alcohol? What about a Snickers bar? What about Coca-Cola? |
| 1:35.1 | Where does it stop? Where does it stop? Are they allowed to play Fortnite? You know, |
| 1:40.2 | where does it stop? It doesn't really stop. And so it's at the end of the day, if we want to have a |
| 1:45.9 | free society, we have to take agency over our lives. And that means agency over addictive things. |
| 1:50.0 | That means navigating through some minefields. One of the minefields is when you go to the grocery |
| 1:53.6 | store and you walk down those middle aisles, cookie crackers, biscuits, all the sugar laden |
| 1:57.5 | process stuff. It's there. It's addicting. It's very similar to walk it through an alcohol |
... |
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