Disclaimer: This article will be talking obliquely about pornography and may possibly contain tasteless jokes. If those kinds of things bother you then please do not read this article.
My Goal: To make junk food as unappealing as possible.
I watched the following movies as research for this article: The Bi-curious Case of Benjamin Buttman (turned out, not my cup of tea) and Clash of the Trojans (my favorite part: Release Phil McKraken! – kind of ‘meh’ otherwise)
Here’s what I found out. First of all, I don’t really get it. I mean, yeah, I GET IT, but it bores me pretty quickly. After about 5 minutes it starts to resemble a nature show to me. You can see two badgers or emu going at it on any old evening public television show.
The Simpsons put it best (classic episode):
Milhouse: Gross!
Martin: Yet strangely compelling… 
But let me ask you; what makes pornography so strangely compelling? Here’s my take: It appeals to the basest parts of our intellect – the lizard brain, as I like to call it. There’s no emotion, no attachment, no reason, no consequences, just the purely physical act of a cable installer and a frisky housewife getting their freak on. It’s basically highly refined and processed sex.
That’s the tame version anyway.
Add in midgets, contortionists, and farm animals; now you have something that pushes all the buttons in a way that no real person (OK, maybe Gene Simmons) can experience.
I was recently reading about a case of porn addiction; something I stumbled on by accident (no, really…) There was this guy that had completely lost interest in having sex with his wife. She was willing to try some of the freaky things that the guy was watching on his computer. He STILL wasn’t interested. Basically, (putting this as delicately as possible) he was accustomed to getting turned on by things that most people would find physically impossible.
Junk food is just like that.
Let me ask you – what makes junk food so strangely compelling? Here’s my take: It appeals to the basest parts of our intellect – the lizard brain, as I like to call it. There’s no nuance of flavor, no social aspect, no appreciation, no thought of consequences, just the purely physical act of a ding-dong and your taste buds getting it on. It’s basically the act of eating refined down to the basest stimulations – sweetness, saltiness, fattiness, and starch.
And when you add in flavors that almost never occur together in nature like sugar or starch combined with salt or fat then you have something that pushes all the buttons in a way that no “real” food can do. Eat that stuff too much and you can’t appreciate the good stuff. Just like the guy with the porn addiction except now you’ve lost interest in steak and eggs.
Let’s face it. A CinnabonTM is the food equivalent of some sort of weird Mexican porn show featuring a burro, a Federale, and a very put out senorita all served up on a well-worn and sticky VHS tape.
Now I’m no prude. Getting down and dirty with a Boston Cream while the significant other is out with their friends is okay once in a while. But doing that crap every day will make you blind (from the diabetes, sheesh) or worse.
Hopefully, you can now see junk food for what it is. Am I saying that eating that stuff is something to be ashamed of? Yes I am. And don’t give that crap to your kids; wait until they’re 18 at least.
Oh man, I miss those giant donuts. We used to order those at school when I was a kid. I kept one in my desk and took a bite out of it every day. Yes it was more stale with each passing day, but when you gotta have your fix it doesn’t matter. Mmm, garbage.
Hahaha, fantastic!
Here’s a quick related article http://www.thatsfit.com/2010/03/30/fast-food-is-like-heroin-studies-find/
Fast food, junk food, and candy designers know exactly what they’re doing and put a lot of work into making things as hyper-palatable as possible.
Interesting read, Matt!
The porn addict guy got me thinking. I’m of the opinion that porn isn’t “good” or “bad” but simply a poor substitute for the real thing that MAY undermine your natural drive (fueled magnanimously by your paleo diet, of course).
Research also seems to suggest that it changes your brain chemistry because it’s like you’re conditioning yourself to get off to a stimulus (computer screen) that historically doesn’t trigger this physiological response. Maybe your brain thinks: “ah, Macbook, I will inseminate you!” if Ray Kurzweil has his way. Just kidding…
POINT IS: maybe junk food is the same way – it activates certain receptors (this is what the whole excitotoxin discuss is about, I’m assuming) and you essentially receive an emotional reward, an evolutionary incentive, to continue engaging in this behavior.
So, in terms of expediency with regards to the propagation of the species, both porn and junk food incentivize our stagnation and perhaps, eventual obsolescence.
Vic
Another thing I find interesting with my clients that eat high sugar diets is that they despise the taste of most veggies. When we start turning the tables on their diet and get them eating more paleo they begin to like more and more veggetables. I would imagine this has something to do with the same neurotransmitter response that is going on from indulging in too much sugar. I find it pretty interesting though.
That describes me, almost perfectly, before starting Paleo. Even after doing Paleo for a year solid, I’m still not a huge fan, but meals don’t feel right without them anymore.
That about sums me up before I started Paleo; even after doing Paleo for a year solid, I’m still not a big fan of the veggies. However, at least now, meals don’t feel right without them.
It’s funn you say that. I was that way before but now instead of craving cookies I’m dying to eat things like brussels sprouts. It’s kind of crazy…or maybe not so crazy. Either way I dig the connection Matt made between junk food and porn. Clever.
I have not been craving vegetables (I always love veggies, so not a big change) but I am craving seafood in an insatiable kind of way – and I have never liked seafood. Now all I can think about it shrimp and lobster and crab and scallops… I still haven’t pinpointed what nutrient I might be deficient in that would make me crave it.
Hey, fantastic. If I get an urge for junk now, I shall just re-think it as my taste buds trying to get some low brow, base action. That should put me off. Love the comparison.
R
Funny, that’s very similar to the latest episode of latest in paleo! http://www.latestinpaleo.com/blog/2012/1/18/latest-in-paleo-47-your-brain-on-porn.html More or less the same thinking…
I have to say, I have been living in Europe for a few years, and not having INSTANT access to my fav go-to junk foods makes it SO much worse. How I miss Krispy Kreme, Papa Johns, Sonic, Olive Garden… Euro junk food is okay, but not the same. I do enjoy Happy Hippos though.
~Celebate (junk-food wise) in Europe.
As soon as I saw the title I remembered a line from the Simpsons where Marge is on a health kick and says “This junk food has got to go. It’s full of chemicals, trans fats, and hard pore corn.” 😉
I was literally salivating reading that article.
“And when you add in flavors that almost never occur together in nature like sugar or starch combined with salt or fat then you have something that pushes all the buttons in a way that no “real” food can do. Eat that stuff too much and you can’t appreciate the good stuff. Just like the guy with the porn addiction except now you’ve lost interest in steak and eggs.”
So simply stated, yet stunningly brilliant and perceptive. Really — makes total sense when you think about it this way. Kind of ties in with the hyperpalatability and food reward thing that’s been talked about on some other blogs.
Kevin Cann: “… my clients that eat high sugar diets is that they despise the taste of most veggies. … get them eating more paleo they begin to like more and more vegetables. … has something to do with the same neurotransmitter response that is going on from indulging in too much sugar.”
Alas, not all of us. I have hated veg since I was a baby in a high chair. (I’m one of those the Monel Lab calls a super-taster.) Even having avoided sugar (and starch) for years now, I still find the taste of nearly all veg totally repulsive. {sigh} It LOOKS good, and tastes horrid! Makes paleo / primal / low-carb really difficult!
the right herbs, butter, salt- what’s not to like?
True. I had eaten broccoli for so long without anything on it but salt and pepper. On Paleo these past few weeks, I put real Irish butter on it this week and WOW WOW WOW. How different and delicious it tastes. I also sauteed some green beans in bacon drippings and bacon last night and it takes me back to what mom used to make. She would pressure cook our own green beans with ham or bacon. That was how I used to think beans tasted. Then the “low fat” baloney hit and, well, we know. We used to grow so many green beans that one summer afternoon, after canning umpteen quarts of green beans in a hot kitchen with 5 kids running around, my mom snapped when grandpa brought one more bushel of beans into the kitchen. After he left for the day, mom marched that bushel of beans out to the outhouse and dumped it down the one holer.
I’ll never think of a ‘big gulp’ the same way. Or even 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 pizzas!
That is why on cheat nights I “make sweet love” to whatever food I am cheating with… now I get it.
Aw man….now all I can think about is how bad I want a Cinnabun. :/
Angelo on the Latest in Paleo podcast made this exact metaphor this week. Good stuff.
Sweet analogy dude. I’d share this on my Facebook wall but I’m not sure anyone else woudl get it…
a ding dong eh…. yea, I saw what you did there!
Once you make the connection you begin to realize how lewd junk food really is.
Loved it, and oh-so-true. Never thought of junk food in that context before!
A perfect analogy! Thank you for this post. I feel so hopeful that it’s coming from a man and a young one at that (not yet middle age I’m guessing). I will admit, as a mother of a 17-year-old boy with a laptop and Internet access, I have used this analogy many times to try to get him through these formative years without becoming obese (in the case of diet) or obsessed (in the case of porn).
I know I will reveal myself as the nightmare mother here, but I tell my kids that birthing, sex, eating, sleeping, pooping and dieing are the single most important things we do in life. I call them the infrastructure elements and once you have them dialed in (except for dieing which one could say dials itself in), you can pretty much stamp happy on your head and go do something creative and brilliant every day of your life. The rub is that modern life has made the infrastructure stuff a problem to obtain and maintain. We are cut off from everything “creaturely” to borrow a phrase from Ernest Becker’s “Denial of Death.” And, the only thing we no longer do (on my list) that primal people did is killing. That, sadly, may be the crux of the problem. (But that’s a different subject, for a different thread.)
I found that the separation from our life as creatures (and healthy infrastructure stuff) starts from birth where we are taken from our mothers an apgar’d before she’s even had a chance to smell us, hold us, take possession of us. Actually, it starts in the womb, where our mothers don’t consider that every emotion she has, she shares with her child and every thing she puts in her mouth crosses the placental barrier (which is no barrier at all). How many mothers have you seen drinking coffee or chewing gum? Or even working at stressful jobs until later stages of pregnancy?
Then, we cut off the tip of a child’s penis and put him in diapers immediately, so neither he nor mom will be aware of when he’s voiding waste. I let my boys go without diapers as much as possible and they were “trained” pretty much by the time they could walk. I’ve wondered how many men need “extras” because they were cut. I’ve wondered what it does to a pysche to be so injured, so early on.
Thankfully, my boys’ foreskins made it a necessity to talk about masturbation early on. When they were little I had to teach them to pull the skin back to clean, so I told them that when they got bigger they would do it themselves and it would feel really good to touch themselves often and in private to make sure their penis was “healthy and strong.” It helps to give kids explicit permission, although heads up on the fact that they won’t thank you for this.
My twelve year old is pre-pubescent so we are still working on the cleaning aspect with him (reminders outside the bathroom door when he showers) but the 17 year old seems healthy. (Don’t know, because he seems to have taken the privacy recommendation seriously, thank goodness and knock wood.)
As for porn, I never thought I’d have to deal with it. I went off the grid when they were little,but when I finally got online they were 8 and 3 and I suffered from sex-phobia for a few years after I stumbled upon some sites on the internet and mass media seemed to be churning up mention of pornography constantly. Let me be clear: I was 30 something and COMPLETELY innocent of porn. The girly mags in a bookstore I worked in as a teen used to have me in feminist fits of rage. Discovering what seemed to have exploded into a subculture in the 10 years I was a neo-luddite was incredibly scary (although I felt more sad than angry as I had as a young woman. I felt like it was going to be impossible to find a man that had any kind of normal emotional connection to sex.) I thought people had gone insane…
In my “off grid” years (which my children resentfully refer to as “childhood in the calm rivers commune where nothing including sugar and tv can hurt you”) I had learned that most of what’s for sale in a grocery store is not actually fit for human consumption and the analogy between online sex media and what fills our grocery stores occurred to me immediately.
Over the years I have had do a lot of research on human sexuality. It’s been quite a ride and having talked to other mothers, I will say that thanks to the internet, we now have to have conversations with our kids that no one – child or parent – ever really wanted to have. But, what the hell… I’ve had to allow my kids to eat crap I would never give a child or eat myself because that’s the culture we live in, so I had to give up the goods on sex and do some real growing there too.
I say: kid – if you require subway sandwiches once a week, we are going to discuss porn, sex and human relations. Health Canada may have their way with my kids’ food preferences, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let the porn industry have total say over their sexual psyches.
And here we are: My older one publishes erotic drawing online. Yes, that’s what all the open dialogue and ‘Calm-Rivers commune’ upbringing got us. Yes, I have a very artistic child. I attribute it to the first few years of his life when no grains or dairy every crossed his lips and breast feeding till 4. (yes, 4.) He’s so good that he gets paid for his artwork on commission. This is what I get for my open dialogue on sex rule.
For my part, my partner and I have found that porn is like chocolate; if you are eating it alone, you probably have a deeper issue that needs to be looked at and dealt with. If you don’t have a “deeper issue” and you do it often, you will eventually have the deeper issue of being fat. Then, likely lonely. We’ve found that chocolate (and other treats) are best saved for celebrations and special times with loved ones. We stick to the quality stuff… 100% or 90% cacao. In measured amounts and served with lots of love and laughter. Same goes for looking at naked folk and watching other people have sex. Infrequent, shared, high quality. 😀
Healthy food is like lots of “meat and potatoes” sex and “self-love”. It keeps the motor running and the relationship relating. Treats are like high heels and stockings, DVDs, and other fun “add-ons” are occasional – and rotating. Tastes evolve. Monogamy is like Paleo, if you are going to make it work, you gots to grow with it.
I will admit, teaching your kids about sex is one of the tougher things I’ve done. It’s still a work in progress. Although I loved this post, my kids are sick of me using food analogies for everything so I better come up with something else soon…
Disclaimer: Raising kids with good diets and honest dialogue on sexuality will likely turn them into little smart asses who will make fun of you mercilessly. But I’ve found that healthy and dignified are sometimes mutually exclusive. ie: I can back squat more than your average middle aged lady.
Awesome and hilarious! It’ll be an interesting battle if I don’t get my boyfriend on the paleo bandwagon before we have children. I do NOT want my future children eating donuts at their grandparents’ houses!
Awesome post!
People giving that crap to their kids is my biggest problem with all of it.
Yes, I do feel that dirty when I cheat with a candy bar or a bag of chips. Seriously. 😉
This thread puts Louis CK’s routine on Cinnabon in EXCELLENT context.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmQ0mqr69Vs
Just sayin’!
That was hysterical! After going solidly gluten-free, and most of the time paleo, I used to say that what I miss most is a Cinnabon. Never again will I think of them fondly as my former love!
The headline of this post is pure gold. The content is pretty fantastic too and I love the analogy you draw here. Very nice work all around! I’ll be thinking about junky stuff a bit differently now.
dooonuuuttsss..with sprinkles..duuhhaaaa..drool..glazed eyes.
My friends and I have a word for food pics…food porn. It drives me nuts when friends take pics of some foods that they are going to eat..chili cheese fries, desserts, etc…lol
I love this article and love how you connected the effects of eating junk food with the effects of porn and you are absolutely right in your analogy.
Excellent article! I’ll definitely be sharing this. Thanks for the great read as well as another reason to avoid junk food.
fu*king hilarious! love it. it goes to show that Cinabon is porn because once you mentioned it I was salivating
I will never look at junk food the same way ever again. ”bow chikka wow wow”
lmfao.
Porn in the true sense of the word.
Great Analogy. I thought after years of teaching university students about health I had heard every possible analogy out there…but ‘junk food porn’ is definitely a winner!
Now my inner-health researcher is secretly curious at the thought of a scientific study observing the link between porn addiction and sugar addiction (Man, I’d love to see the response among the committee if I submitted a proposal like that 🙂
Someone brought doughnuts into the office this Monday – the really good kind from a local bakery. I picked one, and put it on a plate next to my keyboard. I gave myself permission myself to eat half of it that day, but only had two bites. Since going Primal in the last year, most baked goods have lost their joy-making capacity for me (except for ham & cheese croissants). Anyway, I left it there, and the aroma kept wafting into my nostrils and into the brain. Drove me a little crazy at first, but I continued my resistance, needing a bit less willpower each hour, and by the middle of the day Wednesday, the smell completely turned me off. I threw away the rest of it on Thursday. I should now be able to simply pass by doughnuts for a while now. Thank you, “Clockwork Orange.”