Bliss Point and Obesity

Have you heard of this?  Doesn't it sound fabulous?  I mean who doesn't want to hit a point of bliss when they're eating something?  Isn't this the same as a food-gasm?

Well, not exactly.  The bliss point is something very different when we start talking about food - it is the holy mecca that the food industry doesn't want you to get to.  If you related it to sex, it would be the equivalent of really good, almost satisfying sex.  Imagine this... if someone wants to sell you a lot of their food, do they really want those first couple of bites to fully satisfy you?  Or would they sell more food if the flavors tantalized you, but didn't quite hit that satisfaction point?

The hypothalamus, in your brain, is what tells you that you are satisfied - in a number of different realms.  If you overwhelm one point of this satisfaction equation, you become delighted with whatever you consumed and no longer feel the need to keep eating it.  If a snack maker wants you to keep buying and eating their snack, they have to be sure the flavors are inviting, and addictive but never quite satisfy the hypothalamus.

Consider an example of chips.  Do you remember when Lay's potato chips came out with their slogan "betcha can't eat just one"?  They have to be sure you don't eat just one, because they won't sell many chips.  Lay's and other manufacturers do this by utilizing food chemists to concoct a fabulous array of seasonings/spices to dust onto their product.  Let's say that a spicy chip was going to get all of its heat from cayenne pepper.  If it did this, the hypothalamus would be hit repeatedly in the same spot, and satisfaction would occur - thus the Bliss Point would be reached.  You wouldn't feel the desire to keep eating the chips.  Instead, the chemist takes some of the cayenne pepper, in combination with other spices to reach the same level of heat, without reaching the bliss point of any of the receptors in the brain.  The same idea exists with the creation of sweet products.

So how does this relate in any way to obesity?  Well, let's think for a moment about the makeup of these snack products.  Typically not the healthiest ingredient lists.  So if you were to over-consume on calorie-dense, refined food products, your health and waist line will eventually suffer.  Then we've gone ahead and made the products unsatisfying to your brain with our wicked way of tweaking the flavors, so you continue to seek out more of these products in the hopes of hitting your bliss point.  Consider one more factor for a moment as well... your hypothalamus is also responsible for sensing that you've consumed enough calories with the release of leptin.  Leptin is released from our fatty tissue (storage).  If we start to accumulate a lot of stored fat, leptin continues to hit the hypothalamus, telling us to eat less - but we ignore it.  The more we ignore it the more the hypothalamus starts to tune out this signal - and we just eat more and more and become heavier and heavier.  Then on top of that, we feed ourselves snack foods that tease the hypothalamus to the brink of bliss, but without quite getting there.

Does this sound like a recipe [pun totally intended] for disaster?  How can we expect to maintain some semblance of health, when we feed ourselves garbage and then ignore our body's signals to eat less.  It's not that the food industry is to blame.  They have a bottom line to maintain and shareholders to report to.  It's not the food chemists' fault for creating these impressive concoctions -  not every chemist can go onto greatness and create the prescription drug that cures debilitating diseases.  It's our fault for indulging in these snacks and then being mystified when we have to loosen our belts.

The diet industry is taking note too.  Do remember the advertisements for Sensa?  I think this stuff is still around in some format.  You were supposed to shake it on your food and you would lose weight.  I hadn't really looked into it, I just had it stuck in my head that it was some sort of filler.  Like a fiber flake that filled up your stomach.  Nope.  This stuff was a seasoning.  It was virtually tasteless, yet was somehow adding more than enough flavor to a food to make it satisfy the hypothalamus!  Genius.  It was probably made by the same food manufacturers that created the problem in the first place!  AHHHHH!

So what would I do?  Just eat real food!  Make it yourself, make it from scratch (which doesn't take as long as people think), and then enjoy it.  You'll be satisfied because you aren't creating crap that doesn't satisfy, and you'll start listening to your body's cues again.  Achieve bliss in your own kitchen.