Remember the last time you were at the buffet or a party. If you are like me, you probably ate till your tummy was literally full and felt bad afterwards. But why didn't we just stop when our hunger was satiated and even our brain said we are having too much. We told ourselves lame excuses to gorge. It's because we have 2 distinct control centers (brains) in our bodies, when it comes to food. One in our head and one in our stomach or gut. In modern times, our two brains go into war anytime we sense(taste/see/smell) food. The gut mostly triumphs leaving us disillusioned with our lack of discipline and full of guilt. But this war is new to us.
Let's go back thousands of years, a time of feast and famine. Unlike what we see on TV, not all hunts are successful. So, meat was a rarity and we had to gorge on it as our gut told us so. The gut has been tasked with a singular purpose, keep the body well fed to survive another famine. The ones with a good supply of fat in their bodies would survive a famine while others die. So, when the gut comes to knows about fat, it wants to stock as much as it can. The body produces chemicals to reward the behavior of eating fat so that we keep hunting and providing the body with more fat. That's why we feel good when we taste the smooth and creamy texture of fat, the melt in your mouth taste. Our gut also has excess bile stored in the gallbladder to digest large portions of fat during a feast.
A similar thing happens when we see something sweet. We were always fighting or running away from something, the classic fight or flight response. Fight is helped by the muscles, fueled by proteins we eat along with fat. A sustained flight requires carbohydrates-sugar. The gut's job is made easier by the cunning fruit-bearing trees. The immobile trees use us(animals) to spread their seeds far and wide where there is less competition ensuring their species survival. The trees make the fruits colorful and smell wonderful to catch our attention. Then as we bite into them, our bodies reward us with feel good chemicals every time we taste the sweetness which makes us to eat more of it.
As you can see, we (our brain) are not in control of our destiny. We are merely puppets for the trees and our guts. Fast forward to today, our gut does not know that we have a guaranteed and regular supply of food. Gut still operates in the feast and famine era. The gut does not know that we hardly move, let alone walk or run. If we were to ask any party host, they would tell us fats and sugars like meat and desserts are the first ones to be licked clean.
We should not entirely blame ourselves as we are fighting some serious evolutionary forces here, which by the way helped us come this far. But the food and physical security we gained in the last hundred years or so is but a blip on our evolutionary timeline. All is not lost. We need to adapt like we have always did using our brain to keep the gut in its place.
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