the Centrist

This is the time of year that we all make promises to ourselves.  We call these promises: “New Year’s Resolutions” and they inevitably involve our obsessions.  Most of us target America’s greatest malady … over eating.  In the over eating category it is no longer uncommon to see families depend almost solely on fast food restaurants for nutrition.  Make no mistake, for the most part, ‘fast food’ and ‘nutrition’ is an oxymoron.   Furthermore, what we call bad eating habits are in reality a type of addiction.  Although most realize that fast foods have little nutritional value, we depend on them simply because we have become addicted to the good taste in the bad food, as well as the convenience of the product.  Like most addictions this has very little to do with ‘what is good for us’, and everything to do with cravings.  Children as young as one year olds are beginning their addiction to the fast food industry as their parents proudly wean them from baby food and feed them French fries and hot dogs.  They know that a nutritional formula, or better yet mother’s milk, is what the child needs, but it is so much easier to give them fries and processed foods. 

While many environmentalists worry about the insecticides and pesticides in our produce, I am more concerned with the fact that too many American children are being raised without exposure to fresh fruits and vegetables.  Americans are simply spoiled.  When I was counseling in nutrition as part of my TMD program in dentistry, I would have the patient write down everything they ate and drank for about two weeks.  I recognized that most already knew what was good for them, but when I asked about processed or fast foods, they would always deny.  I found it was better not to advise and merely ask them to ‘self discover’, and promised that I would never ‘scold’.  More often than not their diets were packed with empty calories and loaded with what my nutrition mentor called … ‘the three most dangerous white powders in America: salt, white flour, and sugar’.  He was correct, for these three ingredients are responsible for more bodily harm to more people than those products we associate with disease … tobacco, illegal drugs, and alcohol.

Americans have what they want when they want it, but the acquisition of those wants never satisfies it only sparks more craving.  That is why, as far as I am concerned, empty calories is an addiction.  The more we get the more we want.  Once we think we have satisfied our appetites we are barraged with new eating ideas by those ever so tempting commercials we expose ourselves to on a nightly basis.  To satisfy our new cravings we call out or venture out to purchase more empty calories in a vain attempt to gratify our appetite … even though we thought we had accomplished that mission merely an hour ago.  Moreover, almost every nutritionist would agree that nobody should overindulge after 7:00 PM.  But those commercials are ever so effective … why else have most of the fast food chains have expanded their hours?

So now is the time that most of us pledge to ‘give up’ the excesses.  And we are so sincere when we make those resolutions.  But we fail to see the reason it is easy to make resolutions at this time of year.  It is because we have just come through the three greatest holidays of the year, and along with those thanks and gifts came ‘feasts aplenty’. During the span from Thanksgiving to New Years we have satisfied every craving we can imagine … with the tired excuse … ‘After all it is the Holiday Season’.  I find it interesting but that only when the ‘beast’ has been fed, is it easy to resist temptation … for a short time.  Merchandisers are well aware of this … in response to ‘our determined resolutions’, which they view as a threat to their economic well being, they invented Superbowl Sunday.  Thus, merely a month after New Years, if any of us were able to keep our pledge, along comes those wings and pizza on that ‘Special American Holiday’ … with half time enticement second to none.   After all, our inner voice repeats a familiar theme: ‘we have been ‘good’ for so long … and it is Superbowl Sunday.’ But a funny thing happens after that excess … the habit that we thought we had buried, resurfaces … and we are once again hooked.  I guess the most recognizable thing about any addiction is that the only time we are willing to give it up is right after a ‘fix’.  Every alcoholic I have known was willing to give up alcohol only when they were dead drunk … not unlike us over eaters who go on a diet the minute we have satiated our appetite.  Therefore, all we need to rejuvenate the dependence, be it at the end of a needle, from a bottle, or in the drive through … is to be exposed to the product.  And all I have ever needed to hear to break my resolution was: “Want fries with that?”