In this short presentation, Conner Hughes, Director of BrainChanging, describes the impact that the food industry has on your eating behaviors.
During this presentation you will learn :
• How food stimulates the pleasure centers of your brain.
• “Palatability” -- The key factor in food industry manipulation.
• Why certain foods can become irresistible.
• Why humans are so drawn to fat and sugar.
• How food presentation and marketing stimulate cravings.
Normal human behavior dictates that we seek out activities which bring us pleasure or are rewarding, and thus contribute to our sense of well-being. The underlying system in your brain which is responsible for that subjective experience of pleasure is known as your Endogenous Reward System.
A key word here is endogenous, which means having an internal cause or origin. That’s a critical concept and we will return to it in a moment. Your subjective experience of pleasure refers to the fact that we all get varying amounts of pleasure depending on the activities that we enjoy. This experience is totally individual; for some people it might be reading a book, other people might prefer interacting with their friends, and of course almost everybody relishes eating the foods that they like.
These gratifying experiences are produced in one the older parts of the brain, sometimes called “the mammalian brain”. The scientific name for this region is the “limbic system”. Located deep inside the brain, the limbic system is responsible for the feelings and emotions we experience from our body. It is intimately involved with learning and memory. Our limbic system basically works to tell us how we “feel about something” so that the cortical area of the brain knows how to think about it or do so something about it.
The Limbic System contains two structures, commonly called the “pleasure centers” of the brain. These structures are called the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens septi. Don’t worry about the names, basically what this means is that if you were to look at images of your brain then these areas would show a lot of activity when you are having a pleasurable experience. The crucial point here is that these pleasure centers are in close and constant communication with the more evolutionarily advanced area of your brain (the primate brain). Within this area there are two regions, the prefrontal cortex and the orbitofrontal cortex, that are very involved with our planning and actions. It is pretty obvious that if your limbic system tells your cortex that an activity is pleasurable that your cortex would want you to act by doing it again or planning to do it again!
Here is the really important piece. Biochemically, the neurotransmitter dopamine is used to communicate between these various parts of your brain (there are others, but dopamine is the major player). Dopamine is an endogenous neurotransmitter which can be translated to mean “self-made drug”. Drug you say? Yes your brain makes drugs, and lots of them!
Typically, when we think of drugs we mean substances that we ingest or inject. In medical terms these would be referred to as exogenous drugs. But we now know that we also have endogenous drugs. For the sake of simplicity let’s call the exogenous drugs man-made drugs. So we have self-made drugs and man-made drugs. An example of a man-made drug is cocaine, a drug that induces your brain to release dopamine. Typically dopamine is a chemical released in certain areas of the brain when we experience something as pleasurable. So cocaine produces the same feeling in your brain but doesn’t require you to do anything (except take the drug in one form or another) in order to get pleasure. So dopamine is a “self-made” drug that makes us feel very happy or euphoric and cocaine is a man-made drug that does the same thing but it does so by cheating.
The problem that we now face is that we are often relying on man-made drugs rather than self-made drugs to allow us to feel pleasure. Nowhere is this more evident than in our relationship with food. Can food act like a drug? Absolutely. When we eat food our limbic system releases some dopamine into those pleasure centers. It’s a good strategy, your brain needs to reward you for eating food because it is essential to your survival. For most of humankind’s history food wasn’t necessarily very easy to come by and we needed the extra incentive of a reward to motivate us to pursue it. So it has been very important for our survival to have these self made drugs. They give us incentive to work hard for things that may not be immediately available because we anticipate a reward at the end. But in today’s world, acquisition of food has really changed. Not only is it readily available it is prepared, packaged, plentiful and palatable… it requires so little work we barely have to chew it! But our brains still compel us to seek reward, especially if we are stressed. So we engage in behaviors that stimulate production of those self-made drugs.
This however, is not the whole story. Our physiologic well being is geared towards alway trying to maintain balance or equilibrium. The medical term for this is homeostasis and it is essential to our health and survival. Our endogenous drugs are designed to help us maintain homeostasis. Exogenous drugs can easily upset this balance. Exogenous drugs stimulate your pleasure centers with unnatural intensity. This can result in addiction which means balance is lost and pleasure seeking or reward seeking turns to pathological craving. Modern day food offers a lots of convenience but are also highly stimulatory to our pleasure centers. The food industry knows how your brain works and one of their major goals is to chemically enhance foods so they are more attractive to your pleasure centers. Think about it, when you eat a food that makes you produce self-made drugs and also contains man-made drugs, it acts as a super charged blast to the pleasure centers of our brain. We are in a sense programmed to pursue and consume. These altered foods taste delicious and make us feel better, so we are much more likely to eat them again.
Over the coming week, we are going to take a closer look at the food industry and how you can become addicted to food, just like you would to any other drug.
In our last post we alluded to the fact that you have three brains and sometimes it is possible for one of your more primitive brains to “hijack” your thinking brain. Unfortunately what this means is that we are not “in control” of ourselves all of the time. If you’re not sure about this then try this simple experiment:
Fast for 24 hours.
Fasting for 24 hours means that you go to bed, wake up the next morning and don’t eat anything until you go back to bed again that night. This might sound pretty easy but give it a try. At first you will feel pretty good about it. You will get through the morning ok and think its no big deal. Around lunchtime you will start to feel pretty tired and maybe a bit agitated. Then in the late afternoon/early evening your going to really want something to eat, but you tell yourself that you can make it through. Around dinner time is when the real fun begins though. You start to get thoughts in your head… “Is this safe?”…. “Has anybody ever DIED from this before?” ….“I feel really bad, I should eat something, just in case….”. Just in case what? That you will die? As irrational as it may seem, thought’s like these will actually enter your mind as you go though this process. Logically you know that fasting for 24 hours is totally safe, you are not going to die and nothing will happen to you. So where on earth are these thoughts coming from?
Enter Your Reptilian Brain.
Your reptilian brain is your biggest friend. Without it you would be in big trouble. It is responsible for running the background show and keeping you safe. Its main concern is survival and it knows that your immediate needs are oxygen, water, sleep and food.
If you go a certain period of time without one of these elements you will die. Oxygen is the most obvious, a few minutes without it and you are dead. Sleep and water have about the same time frame. About 10-14 days without one of these and you can not survive.
Food works a little bit differently in your brain. Not only is food important right now but also tomorrow and the next day and for the rest of your life. You see air and sleep are easy to come by in terms of your brains thinking – oxygen is available in the atmosphere and you can sleep almost anytime you want. In fact it is very difficult to die from sleep deprivation because your brian will just make you fall asleep. Next in line is water and unless you are stranded in the ocean or the desert you should be ok. Also once you find water all you have to do then is drink it, there is no hunting, killing and preparing involved. Out of the four elements we need for survival, food is by far the least available in terms of our brains hard-wiring. This means ensuring that you have food in the future is a HUGE priority for your brain.
In order to fully appreciate how our reptilian brian works we need to take a quick look back on the history of human evolution. It has taken millions of years for our species to become what we are today. Evolutionary changes happen over long period of time so we can say that the body and mind that we have now are very similar to that of a humans hundreds and even thousands of years ago. The point being that we have not evolved in this “short” period of time.
Now lets take a look at the evolution of our society. Things are a lot different today than they were even a hundred years ago. We now have food on demand. In terms of evolution then, we are way behind. Our reptilian brain still thinks that we are hunter-gatheres. It still thinks that food is hard to come by and that we need to constantly worry when our next meal is going to come. It doesn’t understand that we have 7-11’s and fast food chains outside our front door. Its primary objective will always be survival so if it knows that there is food available then it is going to say “EAT IT”. This leads to massive overeating and a lot of weight gain.
In order to prevent yourself from over-eating and constantly thinking about food you need to tame your reptilian brain. You must communicate to it that you are safe and that it doesn’t need to worry about food because you have food available. Remember your reptilian brain is your friend, not your enemy, so lets work with it to achieve your goals.
The triune brain theory is a simplistic view on the brain but it will give you a solid framework to understand how your brain actually works.
The triune brain was first proposed by a neuroscientist called Dr. Paul McLean, who explained that our brain is actually broken into three distinct parts. He referred to them as:
The Reptilian Brain
The Mammalian Brain
The Primate Brain
The Reptilian Brain
The Reptilian Brain consists mainly of brain structures such as the brain stem, the medulla, the pons, cerebellum an other what are considered “primitive” structures. Its major function involves mainly reflexive and internal body functions such as breathing, circulation, digestion etc. It also handles primary instinctive and reflexive actions which serve to protect us. In terms of our understanding its motives lie in such characteristics as aggression, power, sexuality and protection. It’s number one primary goal is survival, i.e To make sure that you stay alive.
The Mammalian Brain
The Mammalian Brain, often referred to as “the limbic system”, contains lots of brain structures or “nuclei”, however most neuroscientists disagree as to which brain structures should be included into the limbic system. For the purpose of our learning we will describe the limbic system as our emotional, memory and pleasure centers of the brain. The limbic system houses brain structures such as the amygdala, the hippocampus and the ventral tegmental area (VTA). The limbic system gives rise to a lot of our feelings. These areas and others will be discussed. An understanding of the mammalian brain will be critical in our understanding of our behavior, particularly towards eating.
The Primate Brain
The Primate Brain is generally composed of the neo-cortex (also called cerebral cortex). It is because of our very large neo-cortex in comparison to other animals that makes us human. The neo-cortex allows us to do things like engage in complex social interactions and to plan for the future.
The neo-cortex also gives rise to rational thinking. For example you can probably remember a time when you really wanted to do something, but you “knew” that you shouldn’t. It was your neo-cortex telling you not to do it.
Although it is true that we have one brain, there are certain parts of our brain that have their own “motives” and this can cause extreme conflict. We all like to think that our neo-cortex is in control all the time, however it can often get “hijacked” by the other brian structures. So while your neo-cortex might be telling you not to eat that cookie, your reptilian brain is shouting at you to eat it because it is afraid that the cookie won’t be available to eat tomorrow or anytime soon in the future. Plus it also knows that the cookie is high in fat and sugar, which is in essence, brain food. Then your emotional brain whispers to you and expresses how delicious it will taste. All in all its a losing combination for your neo-cortex.
Fortunately our neo-cortex comes equipped with a powerful process that we call willpower. So we use our willpower to suppress the desire to gorge and overeat. Unfortunately however we have limited willpower, and eventually we break down and give in to our cravings. In order to change your brain we need to learn how to tame our reptilian brain and work with our emotional brain to put your cortex back in control. This is one of the fundamental steps in controlling the way you eat.
Now that we have a brief understanding of the three brains – join us back when we will discuss how to use our knowledge of the “three” brains to dramatically increase our likelihood of diet success.