A fellow student and I run a study break for students in my graduate department on a weekly basis. In general we serve them junk food because we have unsuccessfully tried serve them healthy food. One week we brought in fresh fruit: apples, oranges, and grapes. People were not happy. Several people walked into the room, saw the food, turned around, and walked right back out.
I talked about this with another friend of mine who ran the study breaks last year. He had tried to implement healthy food, but had run into the same problem: people would not eat it.
I was able to understand this after reading a post by Mark at Mark’s Daily Apple.
As researchers observed rats that were fed a steady diet of “junk food,” (chocolate, cheesecake, bacon, sausage, etc.) they found that the “’animals’ brain reward circuits became less responsive’” over time. Not surprisingly, the animals began to exhibit “compulsive overeating habits.” Even when subjected to mild shocks, the animals were undeterred as they chowed down on the junk food, and they refused to eat healthier food when it was the only feed available.
Eating junk food causes you to become addicted to junk food and dislike eating healthy food. The dislike you get of healthy food is probably worse for your health than your love for junk food.
People often claim that people eat junk food because it is cheap, but this is not necessarily the case. I bought fruit for a study break and it was much less expensive than the study breaks where I buy processed snacks. Initially I was really worried about staying under budget when buying healthy, but is not as big of a problem as one might expect.
Besides the healthy food being cheaper, it is also more filling. It is easy to devour a box of cookies in one sitting. Try to eating four apples at one time.
Filed under: Diet, Healing | Tagged: addiction, junk food, mark sisson, Mark's Daily Apple
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