Suppressing Cravings: The Addictive Mechanisms of Sugar, Chocolate, and Cheese

Day 8

As we begin the second week of the challenge, please allow me to thank you for joining this journey of nutritional discovery. Many people are participating in this challenge with you, and I hope you've made many new discoveries about food and your body. Now, let's start a new week-it's time to cheer each other on!

If you haven't weighed yourself yet, I suggest you do. If you've lost weight-whether a little or a lot-it means you're doing well. If, for whatever reason, you're still not losing weight, please refer back to the previous chapters, especially the section on minimizing the use of animal products and cooking oils. While your weight may fluctuate daily, you should see a clear trend of weight loss over time.

I hope you'll have the opportunity to introduce this 21-day challenge to others. I hope they'll try it too. You can share recipes, your favorite restaurants, or new products you've discovered. The challenge itself is a journey to be shared.

Now, week two has begun!

Calm the thirst

Today, we'll discuss cravings for food-those moments when a certain food "calls out" to us and can sway our resolve. Once you understand what cravings really are, it's much easier to manage them.

Cravings are not a character flaw. They don't mean you had a bad childhood, nor do they mean you lack self-discipline. In fact, cravings are simply a biological phenomenon. Just as alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine affect the brain, certain foods do, albeit in a more subtle way. So, if you want to give in to a craving for someone else, blame the food. Cravings are caused by the chemical composition of certain foods.

We crave only certain foods. We might like apples, peaches, or strawberries, but we don't eat them indefinitely. The foods we crave include sugar and starchy foods that can be converted into sugar, chocolate, cheese, and meat. Each of these foods produces a numbing effect on the brain that peaches and apples can't match. Now, let's briefly understand each of these foods.

Sugar. Do you sometimes crave sweets? This feeling can be persistent. In fact, sugar has a mild, drug-like effect that can be seen from the first day of a baby's life.

If a nurse tries to prick a baby's foot to take a blood sample, the baby will naturally cry. However, if the nurse puts a few drops of sugar water in the baby's mouth beforehand, the baby will cry much less.

The sensation of sugar on the tongue triggers the brain to release anesthetics. These anesthetics are natural painkillers, much like endorphins that cause the "runner's high" some people experience after prolonged, strenuous exercise. In turn, the anesthetics trigger the release of dopamine, a brain chemical that produces feelings of pleasure. It creates a pleasurable taste and helps you remember the experience. When dopamine is released, anything you happen to be doing becomes a new activity you particularly enjoy. So, around the same time the next day, your brain's clock reminds you to eat sugar. Eating sugar again resets the brain's clock, causing it to strike again the following day.

All drugs have the same effect. Have you ever wondered why people smoke tobacco or marijuana leaves instead of elm or maple leaves? Why people inject poppy extract instead of acorn extract? Or why people indulge in fermented grape products instead of regular grape juice? The answer, of course, is that tobacco, marijuana, heroin, alcohol, and any other abused drugs trigger the release of dopamine in the brain. Consequently, foods and drinks that induce dopamine release become particularly popular.

By the way, if you're craving bread and bagels, it's probably because your digestive system converts starch into sugar. However, as you may have noticed, not all kinds of starch crave them. Your taste buds crave things like cookies, bread, and cold cereal, rather than beans, pasta, yams, or fruit. The reason is:

Your taste buds have long known that beans and fruits release their natural sugars slowly. This is great for energy and stamina, but it doesn't give you the same kind of pleasure that sugar provides. White bread, on the other hand, is digested very quickly, releasing glucose into your bloodstream within minutes.

The question is, is this even a problem? I would say that occasionally eating a spoonful of sugar isn't a problem. The problem is that sugar is an invisible nutrient. It dissolves. So you can add 250 calories of sugar to a bottle of cola, but you can't see it. You can bake sugar into cookies and cakes, but you can't see how many calories that adds up to.

The combination of sugar and fat-cookies, cakes, fudge, frosted donuts-seems to have a more potent numbing effect than sugar itself. It's a particularly dangerous pairing because the sugar tempts you, and the fat makes you fat.

Chocolate also has an anesthetic effect. However, chocolate not only induces an anesthetic effect, but also contains stimulants called theobromine and phenylethylamine, as well as trace amounts of caffeine.

So, is chocolate bad? Not necessarily. Some argue that a little dark chocolate might even be healthy. However, if a little becomes a lot, your thighs will grow thicker right before your eyes. If your tastes have already shifted to milk chocolate-which can trigger various symptoms related to dairy proteins-then clearly chocolate becomes a problem.

So what do we do? I'll tell you. But first, we need to introduce two other temptations.

Cheese. In numerous studies, we've helped people transition to a healthy plant-based diet with remarkable success. Quite strangely, the food that seems to truly linger in people's minds is cheese. Isn't that odd? Cheese smells like old socks, looks like it has moldy blue spots, is high in cholesterol, and is as greasy as Vaseline. Yet, we seem to never get enough of it.

I went through this too, transitioning to a healthier diet. For me, a meal was a pizza with melted, gooey cheese. Many others felt the same way. I spent considerable time trying to understand why cheese-even more so than ice cream or other dairy products-was so appealing.

I believe the reason lies in a class of chemicals called tyrofoam. Suppose I give you a piece of cheese, and then insert a tube into your stomach; we'll find your digestive tract filled with tyrofoam. Tyrofoam are anesthetics. How did they get into your digestive tract?

The main protein in milk and other dairy products is called casein. You've probably seen this word on packaging labels. Like all proteins, casein is like a long string of tiny beads, each bead being an amino acid-the basic building block of proteins. During digestion, these "beads" are released, absorbed, and enter your bloodstream.

However, as casein is digested, these beads do not completely separate. For example, some of them link together, forming chains of four, five, or seven amino acids. These protein fragments can attach to opioid receptors in the brain. As its name suggests, tylosin is a morphine-like compound derived from casein.

You may have experienced the numbing effect of cheese without knowing why. If you've ever lingered too long in front of a cheese buffet, you might be constipated the next morning. The constipating effect of cheese is very similar to that of anesthesia. Just as anesthetic painkillers used after surgery can easily cause constipation, cheese slows down the movement of your digestive tract in the same way.

So, why does Mother Nature add an anesthetic to the structure of milk proteins? You get the answer whenever you see a baby breastfeeding. After nursing intently, the baby enters a sweet, deep sleep. Of course, we attribute a baby's deep sleep to lullabies, the mother's comforting voice, and her warmth. What I'm about to say might sound too cold and "biological," but the truth is, we've just given the baby an anesthetic. The natural anesthetic in breast milk appears to be part of the mother-infant bond.

So why do we crave cheese more than milk or yogurt? It's easy to explain. In the process of making cheese from milk, water and whey protein are removed, leaving only casein and fat-the most concentrated form of casein in any food.

If nature made dairy products contain anesthetic components, she also designed a weaning process for all mammals, including humans, to reach maturity. Of course, weaning ensures that every adult is no longer exposed to milk. However, like a restless teenager climbing over a fence and running onto a train track, we humans constantly try to defy the very natural laws that protect us from danger.

Meat. Some people, especially men, claim that meat is the food they can't live without. Here, the narcotic effect once again raises its ugly head.

A British research team administered anti-opioid medication to a group of volunteers and found that their cravings for meat decreased significantly. This suggests that it's not the grill marks or grease that attract us to eat meat, but rather the numbing effect of meat that constantly tempts us to eat it. Of course, meat-eaters also pay a price; compared to their vegetarian counterparts, meat-eaters have more problems with being overweight and a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, and other health problems.

So what should I do?

If you've had enough and decide to make a change, allow me to offer some advice. First, most people find it much easier to completely avoid cravings than to start by reducing their intake. In other words, if you can avoid the foods that cause you problems for a few days, your cravings for those foods will decrease. Conversely, we are more likely to crave foods we ate just yesterday.

Here are 7 feasible steps:

1. Eat a healthy breakfast. Hunger can intensify cravings. If you avoid excessive hunger, cravings are easier to control.

2. Eat foods that help stabilize your blood sugar. These are the low glycemic index foods you saw in Chapter 2.

3. Do not restrict calories. Low-calorie diets make it easier for people to overeat.

4. Break the cycle of cravings. If cravings for certain foods occur at the same time every day, schedule an activity unrelated to eating at that time. For example, exercising at the gym in the evening can help prevent snacking at home.

5. Engage in plenty of exercise and rest. Active exercise not only has a numbing effect but also helps with sleep and combats cravings.

6. Utilize social support. Let your family and friends know you are cultivating a healthy habit. They can help you resist temptations.

Use other motivations. Some people break free from sugar or chocolate addiction not because these foods are harmful to their weight or health, but because they feel better without them. Some avoid cheese or meat because they understand how animals are treated on modern intensive farms. Many people resolve to eat healthier because they feel a responsibility to keep their loved ones healthy. Whatever your motivation, they can help you stay on the right track.