A post I read on another blog made me reflect on how I think about good and bad foods. That is, foods I am fine with eating, at least in moderation, and foods I would like to avoid, either in excess or always.
The easiest way to avoid a food is to not want it, and I convince myself I do not want a food by describing and imagining it negatively. I started doing this when I was in high school. I was at a sleepover and knew I should not start eating those potato chips. But I also knew how good they would taste, and I wanted just one. Yeah, right. So I said to myself, they’re probably terrible. They’re probably so greasy that if I were to pick one up, it would be squishy. It would start dripping. I could twist it like a cloth and wring out some of the oil, then I could wad it up and eat it. And the grease that was left would go straight to my face. Yuck! And just like that, I no longer wanted it. Of course, in that case it was such an exaggeration that if I were to eat one, the spell would be broken, and I would eat the whole bowl. So while in this case I would be OK with eating chips in moderation, it is easier for me to not have any at all.
OK, name something else. Sugar? I picture my blood sugar rising, my pancreas pumping out insulin, trying to keep up with the overload, overworking, being damaged, diabetes. Now, since this image has to do with overloading my system, a moderate amount doesn’t distress me.
Animal products? No problem. I know the raw violence that goes into them. Knowing that, I never want them. It is not willpower that keeps me from drooling on the muffin displays, it is disgust. This doesn’t take any imagination like with chips and sugar, just finding out the truth. I also know what this stuff does to my health.
Pop: I once overheard someone say she couldn’t drink a whole pop because it was too much syrup in her stomach, and just like that I kicked a can-a-day habit. Sometimes I forget and fall back into it, but it just takes some thought to stop.
Fruits and Vegetables: OK, now good imagery. I’ve done enough nutrition reading to know that this stuff doesn’t just help one part of our bodies in one way (carrots for vision). They are all powerhouses that provide so much of what our whole body needs. I don’t want to be made of junk. I want to be made of the best I can find.
I had a thought that one systematic way to reduce our desires for unhealthy food would be to make a list of the bad foods we crave and come up with a negative adjectives for them. For example, greasy french fries, gloppy cheese, starchy white bread/pasta, cloying eggs. Whatever turns you off. If you want to eat more of some foods, come up with positive adjectives: crisp grapes, crunchy apple, juicy orange.
Check out this page at Cornell about descriptive labeling. They apply it to positive images for increasing restaurant sales, but why not use it in reverse as well? Here’s a list of (mostly) positive food adjectives. To this we could add: bland, boring, greasy, cloying, oily, viscous, disgusting, fattening, unhealthy, appalling, slimy, rubbery, gloppy, syrupy, saccharine, and violent.
It’s an idea.
