Hurry Sickness
I do understand that many of us live incredibly busy lives. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that many of us have what I call toxic schedules: rest is a luxury we frequently yearn for. And, when it comes to food, our fast-paced modern lifestyles have produced the mindset of I am too busy to cook, and convenient foods at least give me a little bit of time to do what I want. I just need a break. Sticking that TV dinner in the microwave, and getting our comfy chair ready in front of the TV to watch the latest celebrity show, seems to be a far better deal than fussing about in the kitchen trying to prepare something edible, knowing we will have to clean all those pans later. After a long, hard day’s work in our cubicle, even the idea of preparing quinoa and chopping some fresh cucumber and tomatoes seems as if we have just been handed one of those twenty-page-paper topics we were assigned in college.
Although modern technology has made our lives easier in many respects, thereby saving time for the things we like to do, it is nevertheless a two-edged sword.1 As James Gleick notes in Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, these advances have in fact made it easier for us to work all the time.2 We essentially live under the Directorate of Time: the clock has become our master.3 Indeed, we can fall into the trap of living under an unnecessary sense of urgency, which can put us in chronic toxic stress and make us ill—and give us terrible indigestion.4 Is it any wonder more and more of us suffer from discomforting stomach ailments?
This hurry sickness now drives a significant part of our daily lives, challenging the value of a good, homemade meal with fresh, real food ingredients.5 Sitting in front of the television and watching in-depth discussions on famous break-ups with our microwave meal in hand now seems like a much better deal for many of us. Certainly, I am taking some liberty with my caricature, yet if we are honest with ourselves there is more than a little bit of truth in the picture I have painted. It never ceases to amaze me that more people know about the latest hair color of a celebrity than where their food comes from. And yet healthy food is essential for life!
The rise of what journalist and activist Eric Schlosser calls a “fast-food nation” has in fact contributed to our hurry sickness.6 According to Gleick, fast-food establishments “have created whole new segments of the economy by understanding, capitalizing on, and in their own ways fostering our haste.”7 The more we patronize such institutions with our hard-earned money, the more we build a mindset (through the QZE and the perfect circle between the conscious and nonconscious mind) that food should be cheap, fast, and prepared with little effort or time.
Under this Directorate of Time, we can become nutritionally starved even though we are surrounded by what appears to be an abundance of food. As I mentioned in part 1, today we have a new health threat: more and more people suffer from both obesity and malnutrition.8 Our current food system is overloaded with empty calories that do not sufficiently meet our nutritional requirements, and an increasing number of us are suffering, both mentally and physically, as a result.9
Eat Less from a Box, Eat Less in Front of a Box: Toxic TV Schedules
Talking about the effect of food marketing on our nonconscious and conscious mind leads us to a discussion about television and how it plays into poor food habits. First, I am in no way against television in general. I have my own television show, and my son Jeffrey loves film production and screenwriting. I myself watch television (yes, I am a Downton Abbey fan!), and I believe that all forms of media can be wonderful sources of relaxation, cultural communication, and learning.
Yet excessive television viewing is one of the defining features of our modern culture and correlates with mental and bodily ill health.10 For example, a study of more than two thousand toddlers showed that watching TV between the ages of one and three was linked to attention span issues and a decreased ability to control impulses later on in childhood. Every hour spent watching TV increased toddlers’ chance of focus and attention problems by a frightening 10 percent.11 A 2015 study published in the journal Infant Behavior and Development supports the findings of this earlier paper, putting this correlation in startling terms: “cognitive, language, and motor delays in young children were significantly associated with how much time they spent viewing television.”12 Similar correlations between viewing time and mental and physical wellbeing have been found for both adolescents and adults.13
How is this risk related to our eating habits in particular? Because governmental bodies and food conglomerates use the television to market their food-like products to both adults and children, the MAD food diet is being wired into the nonconscious minds of every individual who is not aware of its influence, including toddlers. We merge with our environments because of the plasticity of our brains, and environmental influences can become our new norm if we are not guarding our thoughts.14 Wired-in mindsets are learned mindsets and may feel normal because of familiarity, even if the mindset or habit is essentially unhealthy and toxic.15
Toxic Targets: Are Our Children for Sale?
As a society, we should be especially concerned about the impact of food marketing on our children. A growing body of research shows that a greater familiarity with fast-food restaurant advertising is linked to an increased chance of obesity among children and young adults and is associated with the consumption of high-calorie snacks, drinks, and fast food, and a lower consumption of fruit and vegetables.16 For instance, in one study individuals who were surrounded on a daily basis by images of predominantly MAD foods via TV advertisements, billboards, magazines, and other forms of media were more likely to overindulge when they ate a meal.17 Constant exposure to food cues within our environment impacts eating habits. This impact in turn suggests that the advertising does indeed make us think more about food.18 Likewise, several research projects indicate that children are far more likely to eat unhealthy, calorie-dense foods when they drink sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and if they watch excessive amounts of television.19 Another study showed that each additional hour in front of the television increased the likelihood of regular consumption of sugary beverages by an alarming 50 percent.20
And children are constantly surrounded by these MAD food images. The average child will be exposed to approximately thirteen food commercials every day, or 4,700 a year, while teenagers see more than sixteen food advertisements per day, or 5,900 a year.21 These statistics are related to television viewing only and exclude food commercials in other mediums of advertising such as magazines, shopping malls, schools, social media, and so on.22 What is the cost to their health? The “eat-more-processed-foods” message is wired into their nonconscious minds through repetition and automatized learning. These learned habits or mindsets will shape their conscious thoughts about food, and thereby their food choices. Is it any wonder then that exposure to MAD food advertising is associated with higher consumption of fast food by children?23
Unfortunately, food marketing campaigns directed at young people are a global phenomenon. MAD food and drink advertisements are common during children’s TV programs in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and across the Americas, to name just a few regions.24 The food industry spends $1.8 billion per year in the United States alone on food marketing targeted to young people.25 The overwhelming majority of these ads are for unhealthy products high in empty calories, sugar, unhealthy fats, and/or salt.26
Although policies and regulations have been introduced to control food marketing, they are often flawed. Statutory legislation to control children’s exposure to highly processed and sugar-laden foods on television was introduced in the United Kingdom in 2007, and similar regulations have recently been established in Ireland.27 However, these regulations are not applied to program content, while the American food industry remains largely, and unsuccessfully, self-regulated.28
With an estimated two hundred million school-aged children overweight or obese globally, the impact of food marketing is truly a global health issue.29 As the MAD food industry continues to insufficiently self-regulate its marketing agendas, more and more youth are crippled with lifestyle diseases that can affect their future development, spirit, soul, and body.30 Is this not a form of child abuse?31 Is it not our responsibility as the guardians of future generations to do all we can to create a healthy environment for them to develop in? Is it not our task to love, care for, and protect our children (Ps. 127:3; Matt. 19:14; 1 Tim. 3:12)? With children as young as two years of age being treated for obesity, and official bodies such as The Obesity Society (TOS) concluding that SSBs contribute to the US obesity epidemic, especially among children, we need to start asking ourselves these difficult questions.32
This Is Your Brain on “Speed”
Up to now we have been speaking of television’s influence. Now let’s consider social media too. It turns out that TV and social media actually increase our hurry sickness because media outlets flow at a much faster pace than real life.33 Indeed, new forms of media are getting faster as technology advances. A Twitter post, for example, has an estimated life span of roughly a second, if your followers subscribe to a lot of other profiles.34 Again, I am not against these forms of media per se. I do have a Twitter account, as well as a Facebook page and an Instagram profile. Yet as we become saturated in a high-paced media culture, we tend to develop an increased desire for these whirlwind transitions because they satisfy the processing speeds of the brain (1027 bits per second).35 We are essentially designed to do busy well.36
Television in particular, with its cuts, edits, zooms, pans, and sudden noises, changes the brain by triggering the release of dopamine and various other transmitters related to neuroplasticity, and therefore learning.37 Indeed, your entire body responds to fast-paced media forms. As Norman Doidge explains in The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science:
The response is physiological: the heart rate decreases for four to six seconds. Television triggers this response at a far more rapid rate than we experience it in life, which is why we can’t keep our eyes off the TV screen, even in the middle of an intimate conversation, and why people watch TV a lot longer than they intend. Because typical music videos, action sequences, and commercials trigger orienting responses at a rate of one per second, watching them puts us into continuous orienting response with no recovery. No wonder people report feeling drained from watching TV. Yet we acquire a taste for it and find slower changes boring.38
Even your heart and entire body get accustomed to the speed of modern life! Thus, you have to remember that what your brain and body will be learning is based on your choices. The more you choose to watch television and/or participate in fast-paced social media outlets, or allow your children to do so, the more your brain will change, and the more you will desire the “speedy” rush. Ultimately, there is a fine balance between being intellectually stimulated through conversation, learning, and understanding and becoming negatively addicted to these swift forms of media as one picture or video or piece of information after another floods your senses.39
Following the Leader: You Control the Circle
Despite the fact that we feel the pull of the sensory information coming into our conscious minds through the media commercials, we can control how we process this information. Indeed, one of my favorite advertisements is for a fast-food establishment in South Africa—it makes me laugh every time I watch it on YouTube! Yet the message behind this particular commercial has no effect whatsoever on me, since my nonconscious mind is embedded with information on how the fast food was produced and what effect it will have on me if I consume it. These memories/mindsets are immediately brought up from my nonconscious mind into my conscious mind when I view this commercial. When this happens, I do not crave the fast food, or think I should go to a fast-food establishment when I am hungry—I just laugh because the advertisement is genuinely funny. I have learned to control my reactions to the sensory information I receive through directing my mind.
Yet what will happen if you do not plant healthy mindsets into your nonconscious mind? You feel thirsty, so you think soda, and choose to go out and purchase a soda because you associate that soda with the happiness of the marketing campaign you saw on television. You may not believe that you will be transplanted to a gorgeous beach with happy individuals drinking soda, while dolphins leap excitedly in the background, but the positive emotions associated with the idea of fun, relaxation, and friendship imbue that sugary drink with a strong appeal. The perfect circle has built a mindset that says, I am thirsty. And if I drink this soda I will quench my thirst . . . and be happier.
Now you may say that the scenario I have painted is ridiculous, and that you do not think like that at all. Ultimately, however, we each live out of what we have built into our nonconscious minds. The reason fast-food corporations spend millions of dollars associating soda with contentment is because these commercials make soda attractive in your mind.40 When you think of that soda, your nonconscious mind will bring up the four to seven happy memories that the advertisement promised, or the short-term satisfaction associated with a past experience involving soda. These corporations do not hold a gun to your head, compelling you to drink the soda. Ultimately, the choice is yours. And your choices are based on what you have built into your minds.
How could you redesign this mindset? You need to learn how to think about soda again. First, you need to bring that thought about soda into captivity (2 Cor. 10:5). Remember that journal article about the relationship between added sugar consumption and lifestyle-related diseases like diabetes. Remember that documentary on today’s obesity pandemic, and how our children may end up living lives that are more disease-prone and shorter than our own generation. Remember that newspaper article on sugar production and slavery in the Dominican Republic. Remember that book on the sugar industry’s manipulation of scientific data. Remember the damage to our world’s water supplies associated with the large-scale production of soda. Remember the information in this book!
Begin asking yourself hard questions and accept that there will be some hard answers. Are there not roughly ten teaspoons of sugar in a can of soda?41 This added sugar can cause your insulin to spike, and the enteric nervous system of your gut (or “gut brain,” as we will see in chapter 12) to secrete an abnormal amount of amyloid protein, which will start destroying the blood-brain barrier and can contribute to the formation of the amyloid plaques of Alzheimer’s disease.42 This sugar will bind to the proteins in your blood, and your hemoglobin AC1 can rise in a frightening process called glycation, which contributes to neurodegeneration.43 Excess sugar can be stored as triglycerides in your body, making you gain weight, while your normal stress response has been activated into protect mode, which may cause unhealthy physical responses in your brain and body if it carries on in the long term.44 And these are just a few of the negative effects excess added sugar consumption may have on your own body. What of the destruction of our planet’s natural resources, or the cost in human lives associated with sugar production?45 Are we being righteous stewards of God’s creation? Of our own temples? Are we loving our neighbors, or ourselves?
Now, does that soda actually live up to its commercial promises? If you examine the facts behind soda production and consumption, think critically about the impact of the soda industry and your own choices in terms of both your own life and the world, and plant these thoughts in your nonconscious mind through this process of “asking, answering, and discussing,”46 the next time you watch that TV advertisement your reaction will be determined by an entirely different set of memories. Memories that you have chosen to implant in your mind; memories that will determine whether or not you choose to drink the soda. You choose life or death with your food thoughts and food choices (Deut. 30:19–20).
Yet why do so many people acknowledge that soda is unhealthy—and continue to drink it? I have emphasized choice in the passage above, since information is only as powerful an influence as we allow it to be. We have to choose to process this information, or create a mindset/habit in our nonconscious minds based on the information we receive on a daily basis through our five senses.
The true cost of soda, and our MAD food system in general, can be frightening. Do we really want to acknowledge this cost? Is it not more convenient, and more comforting, to ignore it? And it is certainly difficult to rewire our habits, although it is not impossible. It is easier to continue following old patterns of thinking. And if we have spent sixty-three days or more (which establishes habituated thoughts in our nonconscious minds as discussed above) processing the sensory information we receive from drinking a soda (such as the smell, taste, and touch of soda) in the context of the “good life,” reading just one article on the dangers of excess sugar consumption will not necessarily convert us to a healthier lifestyle overnight. The positive marketing of soda, perhaps married to your own happy experiences drinking soda, has (insidiously I would add) become an established memory in your nonconscious mind. Now, “soda = good life” is packing that 90–95 percent punch in terms of influencing how you perceive the information in the article on the dangers of soda consumption. Soda and its association with the good life has been automatized into a powerful nonconscious force in your conscious mind—and thus a powerful force on your choices. And, as the health article fades from your short-term memory within the space of twenty-four to forty-eight hours, the “soda = good life” emerges with a renewed vigor.47
After all, you may think to yourself, How bad can soda really be? Everyone drinks soda. If it were so bad for us, why would the shops and restaurants still sell it? Even my own doctor drinks it! Many hospitals even give Coke to patients as part of their meals. Anyway, nutritionists are always telling us something is bad, then it is good, then it is bad. Not even they know what they are talking about.
My soda example may sound like a food industry conspiracy theory, but ultimately the choice is yours. On a daily basis, we are all bombarded with sensory information, from all walks of life. Yet we have the ability to choose how to process this information. We allow this information to affect our choices. I certainly do not believe the marketing of all products should be completely forbidden (although I find fault with unrestricted marketing of food products to young children), nor do I think we need legislation against diet gurus or individuals who promise that certain foods or ways of eating will heal all our ailments and help us live to a hundred and five. But I do believe we should be taught how to process all the food-related information we come across, and indeed all information we receive through our five senses; we should be taught how to think critically and develop wisdom. Once we recognize that we do have this ability to think and choose—to truly think and truly choose for ourselves—we will become empowered to make healthy, life-promoting decisions, not just in terms of what we eat but in every area of our life.
As I keep repeating, the only balanced diet is one that includes your thoughts. We need to be selective, indeed “fussy,” about what we allow into our heads and what we put on our plates. God has designed the body to work together perfectly. As the apostle Paul noted, “Each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love” (Eph. 4:16 NLT). This Scripture not only applies to the church as the body of Christ but to the whole of creation, since we all came from God (Gen. 1:1–31; John 1:3).
Critical thinking is vital, because our choices determine our mindsets. And as we’ll learn next, those mindsets aren’t just locked away in our brains, far from our stomachs. The truth is that physically there is a tight connection between the mind and the gut. They communicate in ways that scientists have been astonished to discover.