Evidence suggests that switching from a Western diet to a more traditional style of food can significantly improve the health. Many people are aware of this and attempt to make the transition. Often this process is a means to facilitate weight loss. However, despite many individuals attempting to eat a more healthy diet, few maintain the healthy eating patterns over the long term. One of the main reasons for this is that the Western diet is addictive, and therefore in order to abandon the diet and adopt a healthy eating plant, a level of physical addiction must be overcome. If the individual is unaware they are addicted to the refined foods of the Western diet, they will likely not understand the feelings, or cravings, that drive them back to the unhealthy lifestyle. As with drugs of addiction, it is incredibly difficult to give up Western food once accomostisation has occured. In particular, sugar has been shown to cause physical addiction in animals through neurochemical changes in the brain.
In order to overcome the addiction of Western foods it is important to eliminate them completely from the diet. A diet that contains ‘some sugar’ may well be healthier than one that contains ‘much sugar’ but the problem is that the taste of the sugar will remain and the addiction it causes will also remain. Removing the sugar from the diet such that the brain ‘forgets’ the taste and the neurochemistry of the brain reset to its natural form, is the only way to abandon the Western diet and switch to a more healthy eating plan over the long term. Just with drugs of addiction, total abstinence is the only way to really overcome the lure of the addiction.
Eat Well, Stay Healthy, Protect Yourself
RdB
