Selling Addiction

Jean Kilbourne

This morning I listened to two Yale Rudd Center podcast interviews by Kelly Brownell of Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D., author, filmmaker, and speaker, “internationally recognized for her pioneering work on the image of women in advertising and her critical studies of alcohol and tobacco advertising.”

The first podcast was titled “The Selling of Alcohol and Tobacco.”

Ms. Kilbourne describes how after college she decided to be a model, which she described as soul-destroying.  She did it off and on for a while and then started thinking about the images and the whole idea of beauty, who decides.  Fascinated, she clipped out images, put them up on her fridge, and started seeing patterns.

She says that while ads always showed a beautiful ideal that was difficult for anyone to attain, now with Photoshop it is actually impossible.  These images are not real women, and yet we end up comparing ourselves to them, doing harm to women’s and girls’ self-esteem.  She talks about a slide she shows, an ad for the film “Pretty Woman” with Julia Roberts face and another woman’s body.  So Julia Roberts’ body wasn’t good enough to sell this movie.  Of course this isn’t necessary any more since the celebrity’s body can just be Photoshopped.  As impossible as these artificial altered images are to attain, women are made to feel that we could be this way if only we tried harder, bought these products, so if we don’t look this way, it’s our failure.

She said women’s bodies have been used for a long time to sell everything from chainsaws to filing cabinets, suggesting to men that if they buy this product they’ll get the woman, but she said the newer focus is on the sexualization of little girls.  She mentioned that a three-year-old on Toddlers in Tiaras was dressed exactly as the prostitute Julia Roberts plays in Pretty Woman, and encouraged to strut around the stage.  She’s seen padded bras for seven-year-olds in major department stores, and outrageous Halloween costumes.

A few years after she began thinking about images of women, she started thinking about ads for alcohol and tobacco.  She had been addicted to tobacco, had a lot of alcoholism in her family, and was spending a lot of time on college campuses and noticing how the alcohol industry was strongly targeting kids, so she started looking at their ads.

After six months of looking at their ads, she realized with horror that the alcohol industry understood alcoholism better than any other group in the country.  They understood the loneliness at the heart of all addictions, and they knew which psychological cues would trigger the urge to drink.  The addict feels like they’re in a relationship with the addictive substance; for example, cigarettes are your best friends, not your assassins.  She noticed that ads used to show a pretty woman with a beer, with the idea that a man drinks the beer and gets the woman, but now, the bottle is the lover, the drinking is the relationship.  She says this reflects a very sophisticated knowledge of what goes on in the heart of an addict.  Advertisers (in general, not just alcohol and tobacco) do an enormous amount of psychological research, down to putting electrodes on peoples’ brains.

She noticed how they were targeting kids, and then started looking at tobacco ads, because both industries absolutely depend on addicting children.  They can’t always do it blatantly, so often they turn to the internet, with web sites and gear.  They also push products heavily in other countries due to declining sales here.

She also saw how much influence the industries had on media coverage of these issues, due to advertising dollars.  You’re not going to get accurate information on alcohol being the most destructive drug in the nation if the magazine has alcohol ads in it.  You’re not going to get coverage of women’s image issues in a women’s magazine filled with these images.  It makes it difficult to get even basic health information out, much less get people to start thinking about changes for public health policies.   These industries also have enormous power in government due to the campaign financing necessary to be elected in the U.S., so it makes it difficult for our representatives to make decisions based on public health.

She says you can’t really expect companies making loads of money to change the way they operate, but that laws can help.  She notes a recent law in Israel saying that models must have a BMI of at least 18.5+ or a note from a doctor saying she is healthy.  Other countries have similar laws, starting with Madrid five years ago.  In the U.K. there’s a bill to label Photoshopped models, which they all are according to Ms. Kilbourne.

She ends this interview with her hope that things can change.  In the past, when you flew on an airplane you got cigarettes with your meal, and now they are completely banned there.

Ms. Kilbourne has created several films on these subjects.  Check them out at her web site.

Care and Feeding of Cravings

I had a very long discussion with a young man while I was tabling recently at a health fair.  He approached the two of us with the question, “What can I do about the cravings for sweets that I have after dinner?”  My co-staffer responded that he could try popcorn, and she went on to explain how to make it healthy but delicious.  I listened a minute, and then said, “You know, I’m going to disagree with you on that one.”  I’m not convinced this substitution method works for heavy cravings.

If you are, like me, a living human being, particularly if you are a woman, you have probably had many conversations with friends about what to eat when you want to eat something naughty.  We seem to go from Snackwells to 100-calorie-packs-of-whatever to fruit salad to toasted soy nuts to rice cakes to infinity, and what they all seem to have in common is that they utterly fail to be that brownie we wanted.  Do these things really satisfy people, really, for the long term?  If these are working for you, go for it.  You don’t need me.  And keep telling people what works.  Maybe when you want a doughnut, a banana is just as good.

But I spent too many evenings eating item after item that just wasn’t that candy bar I wanted.  And I found another way.  This method works, for me, to the degree that I do not want the offending item any more.

It’s not as simple as “try popcorn.”  There are a lot of possible parts to it, so you can customize it, and so it took a really long time to explain to that poor guy, glued to my words, and alternately standing and squatting in front of our table.  Fortunately for you, I’ve worked out a more organized explanation, but still, be glad you’re seated comfortably.

Basically, my idea is “Pay attention, face your cravings, and take control.” (Disclaimer – maybe someone else has thought of this before me, maybe there are lots of books written about it, but if so I don’t know about it.  The seeds of the idea have come to me from many directions.)

Pay attention: Over time, as my diet becomes healthier, I have become more and more aware of the huge impact what I eat has on how I feel.  Many of you will say “duh!” but probably an equal number of you will doubt it.  It is only very recently that the average doctor is beginning to acknowledge that diet can significantly impact prevention and control of disease; many still don’t consider it important enough to discuss during an appointment.  Schools don’t make this connection when they serve high-sugar, high-fat meals in the lunchroom.  Common sense (“garbage in, garbage out”) isn’t always so common.  So for example, I thought I could eat sugar with impunity until I discovered, after thirty years of mild acne, that sugar gives me acne within hours of eating it.  I did not know this because I ate added sugar, at reasonably low levels, almost every day.  So it was only when I thought, “Eh, maybe these anti-sugar fanatics know something I don’t, maybe I could cut back,” and then one day overindulged again, that I made a connection I hadn’t even been looking for.

This isn’t the only example, but I will try not to bore you more than necessary.  The thing is, I now have a strong incentive to not eat sugar excessively.  The pleasure lasts minutes, but the zits last days.  Maybe this doesn’t happen to you.  Maybe with you, the sugar makes you feel jumpy, or just vaguely unhealthy or even guilty.  The point is to pay attention, not just to pounds on the scale, which for me is too distanced, but to how you feel.  I discuss the concept of not being aware of how bad some food makes us feel in another post I wrote, Why Can’t We Stick With a Healthy Diet?

Face Your Cravings: I’m going to continue with the sugar example.  We live on a very short street with no other trick-or-treating kids, and we are cut off from other neighborhoods by a busy road.  So while we could theoretically get some kids, we never do.  Zero.  So I buy a handful of Smarties (my favorite vegan candy) and then there they are after Halloween.  I don’t eat anything like this usually, so I paid close attention when I ate, well, about ten rolls of them one night and then about the same the next night.  In addition to my face breaking out (which I was just beginning to figure out), I noticed that on the third night, I really wanted more Smarties.  Since there were still a few left, I finished them.  The next night, when I wanted them again, there was nothing for it but to sit with this want.  Now, I could have raided the kitchen looking for something to take the place of the Smarties, but because this was a new craving, and I was paying attention, I realized this was something I wanted to get hold of.  I wanted to Take Control.  So I sat there, and just marveled at this feeling inside me.  I didn’t push it away “Bad cravings, go away, what a terrible person I am!” and I didn’t hold it tightly by letting it drag me to the kitchen.  I chuckled to myself, “Wow, those Smarties are really calling me.  What a strong feeling this is.  Good thing I don’t have to follow it, I don’t have to believe it.  I’ll just watch it and see if it gets stronger or not.”  It is also helpful to see this craving, not as the enemy, but as a part of yourself, like a sick child.  Have compassion.  So, within a minute or so it went away.  It might have come back, but I would just do the same thing, and I found that each time, it was easier to let go of.  The next night, I couldn’t care less about Smarties again.  This was empowering information – the craving doesn’t last forever, and doesn’t come back indefinitely!  When I feel like I really want something, the suffering is not indefinite, if only I can take a stand!  And knowing what I do about the acne and the cravings, if you put out a bowl of Smarties for me right now, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t have one.  Like Pavlov’s dog, I can learn.

This isn’t isolated – I had the same thing happen when I cut out (for expense reasons) the dark chocolate I was eating every night.  At first I missed it; that first night, I did have an apple as a substitute, but I was being aware mindfully, and I didn’t expect it to really replace the chocolate.  By the second or third night, I didn’t even think about it.  I have been without it over a month.  I wanted to see if it would raise my blood pressure to have it again (long story), so I tried two pieces in the middle of the afternoon last week.  I didn’t even want them, had to make myself eat them.  I didn’t crave them later, which seems to confirm my suspicion that a craving is not usually set up by having something just once.

Other examples of foods that I suspect create cravings in me are salt and diet soda.  I have no interest in diet soda unless I have had a few cans of it in the past few days; the first can is “meh,” the second one tastes better, and soon I am vastly preferring it to water.  From paying attention, I have learned that diet soda is not worth the craving.  Here is my posting on someone else’s meat addiction.

A friend told me she used the craving technique of having a glass of water, waiting two minutes, and then if she still really wanted whatever having a small piece.  This is very similar.  She’s bringing mindfulness to the situation, instead of just being dragged to the kitchen, whether to have the desired food or a desperate substitute.

Sometimes when I have an urge to have dessert when I would prefer not to, I will fix a pot of tea (I learned to love it without sugar).  Now, if I threw a teabag in a mug with water and shoved it in the microwave, it might not have the same effect as what I do: put water in the kettle, heat it up, measure tea into my teapot, assemble the tea tray, etc, etc.  It is ten mindful minutes from start to finish.  Do you see the connection?  It’s not really about the tea, any more than it was about the apple.  I’m not expecting the tea or apple to substitute for the Smarties or whatever, to fulfill a crunch, or salt or sweet craving.  It’s just a pleasant thing to do while I experience the craving and watch it go away.

As part of this discussion, I encouraged the man at the table to be very aware of where this craving was coming from.  Look all over the body – is it in the hands, the mouth, the chest?  This is very useful information.  In the end, though, if there is no hunger in our stomach, and the craving is coming from somewhere else, is it a good idea to be eating, even if it’s a healthy substitute?  You’ll have to decide that.

Take Control: I’ve already discussed one way to take control, by facing your cravings and not being dragged around by them.  Another way is to set some common-sense rules and just stick to them.  I’m open to the possibility that that is easier said than done.  I wonder sometimes if I don’t have more willpower than other people.  I can’t really understand an unbreakable addiction (though I can have compassion), and have no interest in reading stories about people making poor life choices, Shopaholic, for instance.  So maybe this is just me.  But I set some food rules, like have a breakfast just big enough so I’m starting to get hungry right before lunch.  If for some reason I have real hunger earlier, mid-morning snack will be fruit only.  Same idea for lunch, with any afternoon snack being vegetables only.  I have a sensible dinner, watch my portions.  Some good dinner rules would be, serving bowls stay in the kitchen, served buffet style; use smaller plates; measure portions; seconds only on vegetables.  I was having dessert every night, but decided to cut back so picked the nights that were important.  Now we have dessert three nights a week, and when my children ask for dessert some other night, I scoff, “On a Monday??  People don’t eat dessert on Mondays.”

I also want to point out that the single most helpful food rule, hands down, was “Stop eating animal products.”  When I went from vegetarian to vegan, most of the junk food I used to eat was suddenly off limits.  Bye bye, M&Ms, see ya, doughnuts.  I no longer wanted to eat misery.  Most people would probably say that M&Ms having milk in them would be a real bummer for vegans, but my complexion, my waistline, and I are so thankful I’m not tempted any more.

The other staffer at the table made a very good point, that often these snack substitutes could be foods that we need more of anyway, such as fruit for dessert.  Absolutely.  It’s just that for me, fruit is a poor dessert; I feel like I’ve been had.  And it leaves me in the habit of eating something after dinner, which is what I’d like to drop.

So, maybe that’s just me.  Maybe I offered the guy lousy advice, though he had the other advice to choose from as well.  So if you feel that the rice cakes and canned peaches are working for you, awesome.  But if you feel like these foods are just papering over a steadfast problem, like they’re barely containing the craving, like you need to keep finding the next new product that will really make you stop wanting to eat a wheelbarrow of cookies every night, then maybe it’s time to Pay Attention.

Two Men With Heart Disease

I tabled with RAVS at a health fair today.  We talked to about 25 people.  I’m really impressed with PCRM‘s handout nutrition booklet “Vegetarian Starter Kit.”  It is very appealing with nice graphics, and made it easy to discuss a lot of issues and send people home with something easy to understand.

This morning I thought up the idea for “Two men with heart disease,” composed a poster, printed it out and had it on the table with the handouts.  The other staffer laughed at my photo of Cheney; I could have been much more cruel, but I had held back.  All the photos I saw of Clinton were calm and happy, but at least half the photos of Cheney he was angry with his mouth open.  So I figure my poster was just reflecting the truth.  Anyway, as little as I like Dick Cheney, I’m not blaming him for his condition, just asking people to reflect on why one treatment is considered normal and the other is not.

The idea was based on a Compassionate Cooks podcast where Colleen first described open heart surgery and then compared that with the alternative by reading a recipe for split pea soup.

Salty Oily Restaurant Food

I was talking to a friend recently about a bad experience with takeout from my favorite Chinese restaurant: undercooked (vegan of course) food which I should have spit out but unfortunately swallowed (though I did throw the rest away – it was so gross), and then the bad stomachache I had late that night.  This is a very reputable restaurant, its food a class above an ordinary Chinese place, and they are very accommodating to vegans and celiacs, etc.  I wouldn’t have expected to have a problem there.  I commented that I can’t remember the last time my own cooking gave me an upset stomach, but that it wasn’t all that infrequent that I would have a stomachache or nausea after eating out, maybe one in ten or fifteen times.  A few minutes later I commented that I had really started noticing lately how oily and salty restaurant food is.  She agreed, but also helped me put it together:

Maybe it isn’t contamination making me ill sometimes.  Maybe it’s all that oil that my stomach is not used to.  I’ve talked to several other people since then and they’ve agreed that it’s a problem.  One friend said he’d tried to ask for less oil but it didn’t really work out.  There’s only one vegan restaurant in our city and every vegan I’ve spoken to says they don’t want to eat there again because the food is drowning in oil and so salty.  I’ve been there four times and I’m done.  The head of RAVS said she asked the cook to tone it down, I think when she was planning an event there where he would be cooking just for us, and he refused, saying the oil was an important part of the flavor.  She said the oil bothered her stomach some but her husband’s a lot, and he just didn’t feel that eating out was a treat any more.

I’m not even picking on the oil and salt from a health perspective; I get going out for a special treat.  But this doesn’t taste good.  When your noodles are glistening and dripping, when you avoid ordering fried or saucy things or ask for less oil but there’s still a slick on your plate, it’s too much oil.  When a dish (I’m talking to you, Coconut Kale at Natural Oasis) is so salty all ten people at the table agree it’s unpleasant, it’s too much salt.

Meat Addiction

I tabled for RAVS this evening at a reception at my town hall before a film, part of a series of Localization events there.  I talked to one man for whom I didn’t really have an answer at the time, but I’ve thought it over a bit since then.

He was in absolute accord that a vegan diet was the best thing for the environment, health, the animals, and peace.  But, he said, whenever he had tried a vegan diet, he was hungry, he just didn’t feel good.  He was a sturdy-looking guy, and I don’t mean that euphemistically.   Big and muscular.  I asked him, what did he eat when he tried vegan, and he answered it was food from his culture: greens, beans, good bread, lots of olive oil.  I couldn’t find anything wrong with that, can you?  I asked if he ate enough and he laughed that he ate like two people, like a horse.  He said he craved meat, and when I asked, “You mean the texture, the salt?” he said, no, flesh, the blood.  I answered that was sort of strange, because he probably didn’t start salivating when he saw a squirrel run by.  He replied that he could never hunt, it was too upsetting, that he needed the meat to not look like anything.

You may suspect he was winding me up or triumphant that veganism didn’t work for him, but he was clearly sincerely disappointed that his craving was causing him to do something he had a problem with.

But that’s when the program began, we had to stop chatting, and I needed to leave.

So bicycling home I was thinking that on that Oprah vegan show I saw, there was one segment in which a staffer admitted that she felt angry on her new vegan diet, and Kathy Fresdon tells her she is probably suffering withdrawal from her addiction to junk food.  I wondered if meat was part of that.  I gave it up so gradually I never felt that, but have you?

I went a-Googling and came across Kathy’s posting on the topic: How to Kick Your Meat Addiction.  What do you think?

You know you are addicted to something if, despite knowing that it’s bad for you or doesn’t jibe with your ethics, and despite wanting to drop it from your life, you keep consuming it. Addiction entails a craving that has more control over our behavior than our rational mind and desires.

I also found this funny and interesting 2003 talk by Neal Barnard of PCRM.  Here’s WebMD’s take.  I couldn’t find anything at the Mayo Clinic or NIH, my two reliable main-stream sources – not surprising given how politically flammable the issue of meat addiction would be.

If I saw this guy again, I’d ask how long he tried to go vegan and suggest he might have been feeling some sort of withdrawal.  Do you have any other ideas?

Chicken-free “Chicken”

Mark Bittman writes about animal issues again in his latest N.Y. Times article, “A Chicken Without Guilt.”

I think I’m in a weird mood, determined to find fault with good news today, both in this article and the last one on Whale Rights.

So I’m going to keep my criticism short here.  It’s mostly a very positive article, for people who want to reduce animal suffering and for people who would like to eat artificial food.  But…

It’s too bad that people have to wait around for science to fix things so they don’t have to take personal responsibility for their choices, in this case supporting factory farms.

And why wasn’t one of Bittman’s four ways to “reduce the level of the suffering of animals raised for meat in industrial conditions” to stop eating them?  Why is that considered so off the table when the creepy sci-fi idea of “reducing or eliminating animals’ consciousness” (chicken lobotomies?) is not??

Anyway, more good news.

Salt Cravings

I was telling my friend about reducing the salt in my diet, and she had an interesting observation.  She said she had noticed that salt makes her want to eat more salt.  For instance, when she buys raw (unsalted) nuts,  a serving is sufficient, but when she buys regular salted nuts, a serving leaves her unsatisfied; she wants more.  I asked her if the craving would last – would she still be thinking about salted almonds the next day, and she said not really – she mostly noticed it right after finishing.

I suppose you could argue that the salted nuts just taste better, but I bet that’s not what’s going on – I know what she means, and it’s stronger than just a more pleasant taste.  When I was young and (more) foolish and kept Bearitos Tortillas, which are quite salty, in the house, I would eat the whole bag even though I was full halfway through.  I didn’t even want any more, but the salt was driving me on.  And yet when they were not around, I didn’t give them a second thought.

It’s not a new idea that people crave a salty taste, but I never really thought before about how eating some salt might derail our satiety signals and cause us to overeat.

Boiling my Garbage

My husband once told me that he and his friends used to make fun of one of their moms who would freeze her garbage.  This sounded ridiculous until he explained that she was freezing food scraps in a bag so they wouldn’t stink up the trash can, and then would throw them away on trash day.

But I can’t help thinking of this story since I have begun boiling my garbage.  The short story is that I’m making never-ending soup stock.  I’ve just started keeping my smallest pot in the fridge, lid on, and any vegetable trimmings that aren’t spoiled go into it right off the cutting board.  It gets peelings, ends, and even the pulpy centers of peppers, and don’t forget the onion skins.  I typically fill this little pot every day.  When it’s filled, I cover the trimmings with water, simmer an hour, and then let it cool.  I drain it into a plastic container with whatever stock I already had.  The soggy trimmings then complete their detour into the compost bin.  If you’re going to keep adding stock to an existing container, of course you’ll want to make sure to use it all up frequently so you don’t have a mix that’s getting older and older.

The long story: I’m not only doing this to reduce waste and save on purchasing stock, since after all the cooking gas isn’t free.  I’m also doing it to try to cut down on salt.  The bouillon paste I use, Better Than Bouillon, is awfully salty.  Despite my pretty healthy lifestyle, my blood pressure has been climbing for a few years, and I’m consistently in prehypertension now, in the 120′s over whatever.  The word prehypertension sounds like something you don’t need to worry about yet, but a Dummies book I read said it would be better called “lower risk hypertension.”  It’s still hypertension, it still does damage, it still increases risk of heart attack and stroke, just not as much.

After reading the book, I bought an automatic blood pressure monitor and have started tracking some things I think might affect my bp: sleep (snoring husband), exercise, meditation, alcohol/caffeine, and salt.  Too little data to comment yet.  I read that vitamin D deficiency may affect bp, so after several years of failing to bring my D up with vegan D2, I did a 45-day trial with some vegetarian D3.  It certainly brought up my D3 levels, but it didn’t make any difference in my bp, so I’ve returned to the D2.  There are other things that affect bp, such as obesity or lack of fruits/vegetables, but they don’t apply to my situation.

I eliminated most prepared foods, a huge source of sodium, from my diet years ago.  This past few weeks I’ve been able to cut way back on the salt I use in cooking, and while my family often adds salt at the table, I don’t miss it.  I made Lentil Soup last night without salt; I used my stock instead of water and some diced tomatoes instead of tomato sauce; I thought it was great.  I’m not planning on being an anti-salt fanatic, especially if it doesn’t turn out to affect my bp readings; but why not adjust my taste buds to a healthier habit?

More Vegans!

The Vegetarian Research Group commissioned a Harris poll in early 2011 to find out how often non-vegetarians are eating vegetarian meals, and how many people are vegetarian or vegan.  Unfortunately, for some reason they didn’t ask about honey this time, but the numbers are very encouraging.   It appears that the number of vegans has doubled since 2009.  Check out the numbers at the link above.

Approximately 5 percent of the country say that they never eat meat, fish, seafood, or poultry, which makes them vegetarian. Approximately half of these vegetarians are also vegan; that is, they also don’t eat dairy or eggs. Note that we had respondents select “I never eat meat, fish, seafood, or poultry” or “I never eat meat, fish, seafood, poultry, dairy, or eggs.” Because we use the word “never” and give the definition rather than having respondents self-define, our numbers may be lower than other polls. We also did not ask about honey, which would most likely give a lower figure for the number of vegans.

We’re Eating Less Meat!

Mark Bittman writes on his blog at the New York Times about why Americans might be eating less meat.

The department of agriculture projects that our meat and poultry consumption will fall again this year, to about 12.2 percent less in 2012 than it was in 2007. Beef consumption has been in decline for about 20 years; the drop in chicken is even more dramatic, over the last five years or so; pork also has been steadily slipping for about five years.

Holy cow. What’s up?