It can feel like a food frenzy when you're eating habits get highjacked. Unfortunately, letting the environment derail our eating habits is easier than ever. Before you fly off the deep end, there are fundamental truths you need to understand. First and foremost, you're not alone. Our ancestors exhibited the same eating patterns that we struggle with today. That's right! Thousands of years ago, our ancestors engaged in opportunistic eating regularly. In other words, they ate whatever they could get their hands on. When they found food, they ate a lot of it. By modern standards, we'd call this overeating!
The difference between our ancestors and us is the environment. Wild plants and animals made up their environment and diet. When they couldn't find food, they experienced what scientists describe as a forced fast. When you break it down, these eating patterns were low in calories (5 to 50 calories per ounce). Today, the average diet is at the opposite end of the chart. Given we're not snacking on wild plants and animals, the calorie density of our diets has increased exponentially (100 to 150 calories per ounce). Fortunately, our ancestors didn't have to deal with the two-for-one pizza specials, Supersize Fries, and bottomless pasta bowls we face daily!
Our propensity to overeat is more hardwired than we realize. For thousands of years, overeating was a trait that ensured our survival. Today, avoiding calories is a complex skill. When compared to prehistoric times, today's environment is the exact opposite. Ask anyone, and they'll tell you how difficult it can be to avoid their favorite high-calorie foods when they're around! Access to trigger foods is 24/7 — something our ancestors never faced. Where do we go from here? We begin by understanding there's nothing wrong with us. We're biologically predisposed to overeat, yet we live in an environment that reinforces this predisposition. Walk down Mainstreet USA, to see how unsupportive our modern food system is. Dr. Kelly Brownell, Director of the World Food Policy Center at Duke University, states, "Our food environment is toxic." His book FOOD FIGHT says that the pressure to overeat is overwhelming!
Food historian Felipe Fernadez-Armesto has chronicled the ever-changing global food environment in his book Near A Thousand Tables. He identifies eight food revolutions, from the invention of cooking to the industrialization of food. With each revolution comes a compensatory change in eating habits.
In other words, as food systems change, eating habits change! Our history leads us to one enduring truth. If you want to improve your diet, improve the food environment! National Geographic Fellow Dan Buettner has embraced this truth and is applying it to the Blue Zones Project initiative. Project team members work with city officials and government agencies to change the environment within communities. In other words, they are going beyond encouraging people to eat sensibly and exercise. Instead, they are transforming supermarkets and restaurants, creating sidewalks and bike paths to make the healthy choice easy. The community of Albert Lee, MN, was their first project. In one year, citizens added 2.9 years to their lives, and city healthcare claims decreased by 49 percent.
The statement that best clarifies this environmental truth: If you buy it, you will eat it! Nobody buys food because their goal is not to eat it. If you're tired of struggling to resist unhealthy foods, it's time to elevate your game by changing your food environment! Your first step is to add high quantities of healthful whole foods (fruits, vegetables, and other minimally processed foods) to your environment (home, work, etc.). These environments need to be as supportive as possible! It begins at the supermarket and extends to bringing the right foods home. Forty years ago, I started packing a daily food bag that went with me everywhere. It's helped me avoid an untold number of calories and low-quality foods prevalent in our modern environment. In addition to adding foods, you must subtract foods that don't support healthy eating habits (i.e., processed, low-nutrition foods that are difficult to stop eating)! For me, it's baked goods and sweets (i.e., bread, cookies, pastries, etc.). No matter how hard I resist, I overeat on these foods if they are in my environment!
It's impossible to ignore that our environment keeps evolving. The challenges we face today will look different tomorrow. A vivid example is Delivery Service Apps (i.e., Door Dash, Uber Eats, etc.). These apps put food at your fingertips, 24/7. You no longer need to drive across town for your favorite splurge in the middle of the night. With never-ending changes, we must continually adjust how we navigate a food system that promotes French Fries and Pizza with billion-dollar marketing campaigns. Ultimately, it comes down to skills. In his best-selling book DISEASE PROOF, Dr. David Katz outlines a step-by-step process for developing the skills you need to live a healthy, disease-free life! Only by identifying specific action steps (adding and subtracting foods, etc.) and practicing those steps repeatedly will we develop the skills to manage our modern food system. In other words, developing healthy eating habits requires a healthy environment – the two are inextricably linked.
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Richard J. Wolff, RDN