Addiction or Emotional Attachment?
I’d heard about Douglas Graham and his 80/10/10 food program but not paid much attention to it until I heard him speak at the Raw Spirit Festival this past weekend. What he said made sense to me so I went and purchased two of his books, “The 80/10/10 Diet, Balancing Your Health, Your Weight, and Your Life, One Luscious Bite at a Time” and “The New High Energy Diet Recipe Guide”.
The following quote was taken from the former book, pg. 242:
“People who are emotionally attached to cooked foods aren’t actually addicted to them since it is physiologically impossible to be addicted to something that is harmful to us. The body simply is not put together that way. It is designed to thrive and cannot become addicted to a harmful substance. The human psyche, however, can become very much addicted to the shift in perception that occurs after we ingest certain substances. A yearning for that shift in perception is the ever-present illusion that lures us to eat cooked foods.”
If this is in fact true, then how is it people who we “say” are addicted to harmful substances including codeine, caffeine, nicotine, heroin, etc. have physcial detox symptoms?
Your thoughts? (add them below please)
Tags: 80/10/10, Addiction, alcohol, caffeine, cooked food, detox, Doug Graham, Douglas Graham, health, illusion, Living Food, nicotine, Raw Food, Raw Spirit Festival, Revvell
September 20th, 2008 at 6:14 am
I’ve been trying to learn more about this, so it’s interesting this topic came up here! Interesting thoughts there… I guess I could see that. So perhaps, really it’s just a paradigm shift in the way he’s describing it. From my current knowledge base, I would have to disagree.
I come from a unique point of view (well, sort of unique) because I have been detoxing cacao for several days and went through a really strong detox from coffee and another from Ritalin. I know that what I felt was a deficit after regularly consuming those substances. I would get flashes of joy and concentration when taking them, but then be confused, bewildered and less happy when they began to wear off, with a headache to boot. This was both physiological and psychological. I wouldn’t equate those things to being merely emotional or about perception.
I don’t know if cooked food falls into the “reward” category in the mesolimbic dopamine system as drugs do. I think the quote above, as a general statement about addiction, seems to be minimizing something profoundly more complicated than a shift in perception.
I’d be curious to read the research he used or the rationale beyond the snippet.
September 20th, 2008 at 7:03 am
Hi Eva,
Thank you for your comments. All his research is in the back of the book mentioned. Don’t know which he used for that statement or if it was just from his own experience and/or that of his clients.
It’ll be interesting to hear what others have to stay. Stay tuned.
Revvell