12 Questions
Experiments show [sugar] lights up the same circuits in your brain as drugs like cocaine.
the answer. Reducing obesity in the population is a political problem. There’s all sorts of initiatives around the world to reduce obesity because it’s such a hideously expensive health problem that can sink the whole healthcare system. Other countries have already banned junk food advertising to children, limited the size of soft drinks or imposed sugar taxes. you think
those measures help? They have a cumulative effect but it needs a multi-pronged approach. It’s a huge job and our Government doesn’t seem to have the appetite to take it on. Partly it’s because the food lobby has such a strangle-hold on how food is marketed and sold. Our food supply is controlled by huge multinational corporations that make their biggest profits by selling carbohydrates because they’re cheapest to produce and humans are unable to stop eating them. We’re biologically wired to love carbs, particularly sugar. We’ve become Iike those feedlot cattle, standing in a bleak square up to our ankles in mud being pump-fed corn feed to fatten us up. That’s how we’re treating the human population now and nobody’s prepared to say stop. Industry lobby groups spend billions influencing governments not to interfere. Public health advocates on the other side like Boyd Swinburn and Robyn Toomath work on grants of tens of thousands of dollars. Robyn quit in exasperation and I don’t blame her. education
help? Part of it is educating people to eat vegetables and real food instead of crap out of packets. But telling people sugar’s bad for them doesn’t stop them eating it because it’s extremely addictive. Experiments show it lights up the same circuits in your brain as drugs like cocaine. There’s this neoliberal idea that people should just choose to eat healthier but if your BMI’s over 35 or 40 we know absolutely scientifically that you can only lose weight for a few months. Nine months is as long as anybody can maintain a really substantial diet change in the toxic food environment we live in. Within a few years 99 per cent of those people will be back up to their previous weight, plus more. If you’re still less than 35 BMI there’s a chance you can maintain your weight at a healthier level. about
exercise? Exercise has no effect on your weight. Exercise is good for your mental health, it makes your mood better, it makes you sleep better which is really important for weight maintenance and it helps the inhibitory centres in your brain. So people who exercise regularly are more likely to choose healthier food. But you can’t compensate for the amount of bad stuff in our diet by exercising it away. You have to change your diet. I’m 48 and it’s getting harder for me to maintain a healthy body weight. I eat less carbs,