Ending Food Cravings By Tackling The Bliss Point Head-on
It's time to snack with your eyes WIDE Open
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We’ve all been there. Heck, maybe you are there right now.
A rough day at work, an argument with your partner, trouble with your kids, bills piling up, something else has just broken and needs repair, the dog peed on the floor . . . stress city, right? . . . and all we want to do is turn on some Netflix, grab our favorite go-to snack and zone out of the world for a few hours.
Nothing wrong at all with zoning out. But the culprit in this story is the go-to snack food. It’s the thing silently killing you.
We’ve been lied to and coerced for years: “bet you can’t eat just one”.
It’s a slogan or a threat depending on which side of the sofa you find yourself on.
The food industry isn’t being funny. It’s counting on you ponying up to the check-out counter over and over again. They spend billions on bliss-point testing each and every food they put on the shelf.
What’s the bliss point? Perhaps one of the most evil conspiracies out there, and it’s coming for you. Too dramatic? Keep reading.
What’s the bliss point?
The bliss point is that perfect ratio of sugar, salt and fat in food that makes your whole being melt when take that first bite. This food doesn’t just light up your senses, it lights up the dopamine center of your brain. The very same center associated with sex, winning, gambling, alcohol, illicit drugs, and earning money.
***ding, ding, ding, ding - winner winner chicken dinner***
There’s nothing inherently wrong with sugar, salt and fat in foods. Your body uses sugar for energy, salt to maintain water balance, and fat is in an essential component of every cell in your body.
The problem arises when sugar, salt and fat are used to trigger an overt dopamine reaction when consuming foods that have poor nutritional value. It is deception and it is NOT an accident.
These foods have been engineered, refined and redefined to make sure you get a maximum hit of dopamine in the very first bite. They’ve been rendered shelf-stable through ultra-processing and essentially that means all the good nutrients (aka the ones that support life and therefore can allow food to spoil) have been removed.
We are biologically geared to seek foods that give us pleasure because in our history, these were the best foods for us to consume. Now these bliss-foods are devoid of life-giving nutrients, so void that they don’t trigger our bodies to send the signal that tells us to stop eating. You just keep wanting more and more.
Knowing there’s poison in the bowl
On the one hand, you can’t beat yourself up too badly if you eat the whole bag of chips, the box of cookies, or down an extra large pop. These foods are designed to make you over-consume.
But all the same, we each have a choice in what we put into our bodies. The thing is that bliss point science makes it overwhelmingly difficult for you to choose healthy foods.
The more often you eat these manipulated foods, and the closer they get tied to other pleasures like taking a break, the deeper and faster the addiction cycles become and the health impacts compound over time.
The food industry is well aware that their foods contribute to disease. There are hundreds of studies that link poor diets and ultra-processed foods to cancer, heart disease, diabetes and other chronic conditions. There is no hidden surprise here in these results. There can’t be a different outcome because your body has been denied what it needs to create health.
They keep making these foods all the same. Worse still, they promote them to children to ensure a never-ending supply of addicted customers. . . .sugar laden breakfast cereal is death in a box, but it’s still on the shelf without a skull and cross-bones marking on the label. At minimum, these should be in the dessert aisle.
And that’s the crux of this situation. When does liability for food companies actually kick in? [Take a look at: The Food IS the Crime for an interesting perspective on this]
If there is a defective seat belt or air bag in a car, it gets recalled and pulled from use until a fix is created. If a food is contaminated, it also gets recalled and pulled from the shelf to protect human health.
But ultra-processed foods are linked to millions of deaths annually, and even more chronic health conditions, and yet they remain on the shelf, being consumed in ever increasing proportions. What’s wrong with this picture?
Whatever is going on out there, one thing is clear. The powers that be in Canada, the US, and some other parts of the world are NOT putting human health first when it comes to bliss-point engineered addictive foods. The powerful food lobby has made sure of that.
Take back your life
None of this is a reason to just give up and give in. Simple will power strategies often fail in the face of dopamine triggering foods. But there is a progression of steps that can pull you back from the zombie food apocalypse.
First - eye wide open in recognizing what these foods are. Then creating a path to improved health.
Overcoming Bliss Point Foods
1. Wean yourself off bliss-point foods gradually at the start
In the beginning, trying to stop eating a favorite food - whether that’s chips or soda or fast food or salad smothered in a rich dressing, feels really impossible.
But from personal experience, simple substitutions and selecting healthier options over time for things like salad dressings, sauces, condiments, sweeteners and snack items can start you on the path to feeling so much better.
When your body starts getting the nutrition it needs, and the roller-coaster dopamine highs of bliss point foods become less frequent, then real change becomes possible.
Start by reading the labels. Sugar hides in many forms.
Recognize that salt hides a lot of detrimental food deficiencies. Wean back from salt over time to start appreciating what real food actually tastes like.
But don’t switch to low fat anything! Low fat products use excess sugar and salt to make up for the lost pleasure triggers that fat brings us. They also lack the fat satiation triggers that tell you to stop eating.
Weaning yourself off slowly can be as simple as replacing one soda with a bubbly water, having one spoon of sugar in your coffee instead of two, or choosing a natural corn chip over a kettle-crunch potato chip. Try eating a baked potato instead of French fries. How about a basic oil and vinegar dressing instead of a rich creamy one? Eat a piece of fruit instead of having a glass of juice.
Small steps and substitutions get the ball rolling.
2. Take a break to create awareness
Once you have been able to swap out some bliss-point foods for healthier choices, then it gets much easier to try not eating them at all.
For me, the only thing that works with potato chips is to not buy them.
At first, I would compulsively check my cupboard, even though I knew I didn’t buy any. Then I had to come up with something else to eat. Sometimes I would even contemplate driving to the store to get some anyway (such is the nature of a food addiction). But resistance and persistence have paid off.
A few weeks ago I decided to “treat myself” with a small bag of chips. I was shocked at how bad they tasted - really bad actually. And that kind of awareness shift can only happen when you give your body a break from these highly addictive foods and feed yourself real nutrients. After a while your body can actually tell what is happening and send up the warning signals that get overwhelmed when we are blindly enjoying a bliss hit.
Once you create awareness, your body becomes a powerful ally in telling you the truth about what you are eating.
3. Consume whole nutrient dense foods
In the fight to regain your health from too much ultra-processed foods, whole natural foods rich in nutrients, antioxidants, vitamins and minerals help your body heal and recover.
And these foods do taste awesome! Think about a hot buttery baked potato, a juicy steak, naturally smoked bacon, cheesy broccoli, and the richness of a tuna sandwich. These are the foods that have sustained us for hundreds of years.
Real butter, yogurt and cheese may be more “processed” than a potato, but they represent foods humans have eaten long before grocery stores ever existed. (check out
post on Feel Free to Choose Cheese)Whole natural foods provide everything you need to be healthy and stay health. They help you to develop a sense of what that feels like to be both nourished and satisfied.
Think about it this way. A typical bag of potato chips contains 10-12 medium potatoes. Can you imagine eating 10-12 medium baked potatoes with butter? Nope! The potatoes honestly signal to your brain that you have enough nutrients now. The chips lie and tell you to keep eating.
4. Make it yourself
Perhaps the final shift away from bliss point foods is to make foods at home in your own kitchen. Start with whole foods and prepare the seasonings and sauces from their basic ingredients as well.
Ironically, it doesn’t take as much time as you might think. In the time it takes for a boxed pizza to “cook” in the oven - let’s call it 20 minutes - you can put together a stir fry, rice or potato dish. The bottom line is that it takes about 20 min to cook rice or potatoes and while those cook it is easy to chop up some veggies, and thinly sliced meat if you choose, and have it ready to put on top. There are plenty of easy recipes on Google these days.
Just like the weaning off concept in #1, start by creating a home-made substitution for a pre-made meal, and build up from there. For me it was learning to make really great soup! I’ve never looked back. I will occasionally have a tinned soup, but it’s rare now and I often regret making that decision. Re-training how we think about food is part of the solution.
Health begins when food deception ends
Feeling tired all the time, having aching muscles and joints, dealing with high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high anxiety or deep depression are all symptoms of a body in distress. I believe that food is our first line of medicine when it comes to supporting ourselves through whatever conditions we are dealing with.
Good nutrition is as fundamental to feeling good as air is to breathing. You can pay the cost high quality food, or you can pay for health care.
Bliss point science tries to purposefully deceive you into thinking that modified foods are actually good for you, when in fact they’re killing you slowly.
It’s willful deception to use sugar, salt and fat to create larger and larger dopamine hits in your brain so that you will be manipulated into brand loyalty and buying more products.
The clue is in the craving. Manipulated foods leave you with intense feelings of wanting more. Richly flavored, sensory, cultural foods offer a much different experience and leave you feeling satisfied for hours without craving another plate.
Imagine if the same amount of money being spent on bliss point manipulations was going into maximizing the nutritional value of the food we eat. Imagine if companies were spending billions to make sure you were the healthiest you could possibly be.
That’s not happening. There isn’t enough profit in healthy food and healthy people.
That means the only person who can make a difference is you. If something tastes just too good to be true, chances are it isn’t what it makes itself out to be. Learn to listen to your body again, instead of the noisy conversation happening in your brain.
great post with lots of good information!
Great post Sue. Funny this should come up just as I have started to read the book Salt Sugar Fat - How the Food Giants Hooked Us. It is all about Bliss Point.