Opinion
(2008-04-07)
Listen Now:
BRUSH, CO
(KUNC) -
Red Food
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by Marc Ringel, M.D.
KUNC April 7, 2008
Originally I was going to talk about an article with the fascinating title, Do not eat the red food! Prohibition of snacks leads to their relatively higher consumption in children, from the journal, Appetite. The abstract described a scientific study that demonstrated, as many scientific studies do, what everybody already knows, in this case about the perversity of children. Kids will automatically be attracted to whatever is forbidden. (You could say the same about adults, but they weren't the subjects of this particular study.)
Though the article appeared to belabor the obvious, I thought it might provide a good jumping off point for discussing nutrition, kids, behavior, and appetite. So I asked our medical librarian for the whole paper. She sent back only the abstract, explaining that the article in question hadn't been published yet.
The abstract came along with a bonanza of two pages chock full of summaries of articles that I hadn't requested, all due out in the same issue of Appetite as the piece on red food. Several more of the titles listed on these pages also grabbed my attention, including Chewing it over: Effects of chewing gum on appetite, Influence of breakfast on cognitive performance, appetite and mood in healthy young adults, and Keep it on: How complex diet rules prevent weight loss.
I searched these summaries too for commentary ideas, as well as for ways to help my patients eat better, and even for hints that might allow me to lose a few pounds. The papers appear to be full of good notions about managing appetite. Trouble is, there are too many good notions. I can hardly imagine that there exists that much reliable information about appetite and how to influence it as to fill a journal every other month, year after year because, if we already know and continue to learn so much about the subject, how come so many people don't eat right? Why are so many of us overweight, for example?
The answer is, of course, that our most basic drives are just that, basic drives. Understanding them intellectually hardly makes a dent in the huge programmed-in unconscious urges that underlie our eating behavior. The history of the push for food begins with ancient ancestors, single-cell creatures that could locomote along traces of nutrient molecules toward areas of higher concentration until they arrived at the meal they needed to survive. A protozoan's ability to follow a molecular concentration gradient is the precursor of the senses of smell and taste that inform our own appetites.
As you can imagine, and no doubt have experienced yourself, it's a lot to expect that doing something as simple as chewing gum between meals could neutralize appetite routines hard-wired into our bodies over a billion or so years of evolution. Which is not to say that you shouldn't to name just a couple of things you could try doing to nudge your intake in a more healthy direction by chewing gum (sugarless of course), as well as eating a good breakfast. Just don't expect that a subscription to Appetite, the journal, will change much about appetite, the way of life. Still, there are things to be gained from the publication, such as the strong suggestion that you allow your kids consume at least a bit of anything that's not poisonous, especially the red food.
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