NEWSLETTER - DAY 04 THURSDAY 21st FEBRUARY
Food marketing blamed for obesity epidemic E
asy access to fast foods has resulted in the “rewiring” of modern man’s brains and created a form of food addiction that has led to gross overeating and obesity among children, says a leading Canadian paediatric cardiologist. Obesity was now occurring in “young and younger children, as young as five, and fast food marketing was increasingly aimed at children, says Dr Brian McCrindle, of The Sick Children’s Hospital in Toronto. To fight the growing scourge of obesity it was essential to control the marketing of fast food to children, who are consuming an increasing amount of junk food while sitting in front of TV, he says. “Activity levels among children had dropped and they are spending more and more time in front of TV or playing video games, while consuming unhealthy foods.” Unlike the eating habits of man’s hunter gatherer ancestors who ate because they were hungry, modern fast food, just like other addictions,
By RAY JOSEPH triggered dopamine “rewards” in the brain. “The first step has to be to limit direct marketing of foods and the video games that are direct drivers of overeating,” Equally important in the case of adults was the need to label all foods so people could see how many calories they contained, so they could make decision on the kind of food they consumed, he says. Early man was primarily a gatherer - and sometimes hunter _ who lived on a high fibre, low calorie diet and humans were “designed” to conserve and store energy as fat. Food was scarce and there were “times of famine and feast” and ancient man tended to eat food they were sated, but with “addictive”, modern fast foods people ate to reward themselves even if they were not hungry. “There was a granular development as food source became stable and then the late 60s and 70s saw the advent of
Hunter gatherers ate due to hunger, not cravings
hyper-palatable foods, which changes the brain’s neural responses,” he says. “By the 80s we began noticing a dramatic increase in population weights ... heavier people became heavier. It was even more noted in adolescents and children,” says McCrindle. Instead of people eating because they were hungry, he says, “it became crave and reward and people were compelled to over-consume”, leading to an increase in obesity. Tasty fast foods motivate behaviour that triggers impulses in the brain’s dopaminergic centres that are related to addiction and rewards. The fast food industry tapped into the brain’s rewards process by producing hyper-palatable food, which inevitably contained unhealthy quantities of sugar, fat and salt to make it taste good. “It builds up good memories of food as entertainment and leads people to self-reward. And larger portions, supersizing, are seen as a higher reward value,” says McCrindle. Adding to the growing obesity problem was the unlimited access to fast foods that people now have, which has led to “hyper eating”. “They (fast food chains) are not concerned about health, it’s all done for profit,” he concludes.