And yes, I’m not gluten sensitive (small intestine biopsy says no), but there is definitely something in wheat that doesn’t agree with me. I’ve always had it, but it has gotten worse with age and I really need to limit it or I get some killer heart burn (and other fun symptoms).

The wikipedia article, with additional citations, is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeiser

I don’t think the food reward idea explains the situation in poverty-stricken countries where obesity is prevalent despite the fact that there is little food available, eg, children show signs of malnutrition while their mothers are obese.

That said, whether it is correct or not, the food reward idea leads you to largely the same diet as a low carb/paleo diet, that is, avoid processed foods, eat whole foods and good fats, don’t be afraid of meat.

But the body’s “reward system” (primarily the dopamine pathway called the medial forebrain bundle) becomes gradually desensitized to artificial overstimulation (e.g. with cocaine), so it requires ever-higher doses to feel good.

Meanwhile, when you eat a lot of “junk” foods, your body’s “thermostat” – the hypothalamus – can lose sensitivity to appetite-regulating hormones like leptin, which “reports” via your bloodstream that you’ve had enough to eat.

Overstimulation (as with nicotine, alcohol and methamphetamine) can also very quickly destroy a very slender bundle of nerves called the fasciculus retroflexus, which carries impulse and behavioral control signals from “executive control centers” in your cortex to your primitive emotional, instinctual behavior centers (your limbic system and midbrain/hindbrain), and regions that govern craving signals (such as your habenula and hypothalamus).

These parallel changes to your brain and body are the basis of addiction – and why it’s so incredibly hard to stop once an addiction has you in its grip. The neural pathways that give you control over your destructive behaviors have been destroyed. Read about it in The Path Book II.

All four of then just happen to be sticking you with the on-going tab for their successes and the funeral expenses for their failures.

The exercise versus quantity argument is moot even if you’re filling your face with an eye dropper filled with indigestible crap.

The whole obesity epidemic started in the ninety-seventies after Earl Butz waged the American version of Stalin’s agrarian revolution. There was no mention of an obesity epidemic before then because obesity was a rare disease. However, Butz’s approach of subsidies and financial incentives to farmers to let some fields lie fallow and rotate crops grown actually worked.*

The problems began when Richard M. Nixon started shipping huge quantities of US wheat production to Russia, in response to at the time ongoing Ukrainian crop failures, and in order to replace wheat, Butz embarked the US in a giant agrarian program to supplant and replace wheat with another crop: corn.

Unfortunately corn, which had always been considered pig slop in Europe  (which is why Russians would go to war before eating it,) is not as digestible and easily metabolized as wheat (with its problem of gluten) or as easily digested as rice. (End result: marbling of fat and muscle tissue. [Obesity is marbling of more fat and less muscle tissue.])

The subsidies for corn have resulted in corn being used in everything from our clothes to our gas tanks and corn and its derivatives are used in every product or the production of every product in every aisle of the grocery store.

If we compound the problems of the digestibility/metabolization of corn itself with the need for/use of preservatives for corn based products we arrive at the second half of the problem: our indiscriminate use of food preservatives.

Ask yourself the following question: “If something as undiscriminating as bacteria won’t eat stuff that’s left for weeks on a grocery store shelf, is it really smart for me to put it in my mouth and swallow it?”

While I laud the coming of refrigeration, I curse the coming of chemical preservatives synthesized from oil. (You know, all the additives with unpronounceable names at the end of the nutrition label. They maybe be present in near trace amounts but they are not breaking down with digestion, [that's why BisPhenol-A, which has estrogen like properties, is present everywhere in the fatty tissue of every living person on earth,] or worse, it is breaking down into constituents with toxic effects.)

*) The sad part of this story is that our reliance on chemical fertilizers has led to the U.S. now having the same kind of monoculture, corn grown farther than the eyes can see, that led partly to the Ukrainian wheat crop failure [1930–1937] and recurred in the sixties (and the sensitivity to a blight that led to the Irish potato famine of the nineteenth century [1845-1852].)

Put another way, the subjective enjoyment is caused by the reward system.

Also, I’m pretty worried that “low carb” seems to be equated to “paleo”.   In reality the two have nothing to do with each other.   For a good counter example of the “low carb cures everything” argument, just look to the Kitavans, who obtain 70% of their calorie intake from carbs and display no signs of obesity nor heart disease.

Hmm… yes, well… that really doesn’t help much, does it? Sure, nobody is, for instance, forcing anybody to smoke. I hear it’s not that easy for most to stop. Same for drugs… alcohol… and yes, eating too much food.

When on a normal diet I have these “little voices” in my head to eat more. More. MORE. When I’m on a low carb diet they stop… mostly… at least to a level I can mostly ignore them. Sure, they are not really “little voices”, nobody is forcing me… but what they are is a horrible urge and need that won’t relent until it is satisfied. I would guess a bit like a tic. Sure, it is me who decides to satisfy that need… but… it would be easier without that darn thing in my head.

I think most people would consider obesity to be a clear negative consequence.

“If I took a person’s cola away, would they get the shakes? Would they break into a convenience store at night to get a cola fix? I’m going to say no.”

This argument is silly. When an alcoholic gets “the shakes,” it is the result of that drug’s unique pharmacology. Relatively few addictive drugs cause this symptom when withdrawn. Powerful craving is the hallmark of addiction. 

Furthermore, you wouldn’t say that a person isn’t an alcoholic just because they haven’t broken into a convenience store. Yet sugar soda is even less expensive and more easily obtainable than alcohol. 

Or how about recently-deceased psychology Professor Bart Hoebel, who said, “Nicole Avena and I have shown that daily bingeing on sugar can have the same behavioral and brain neurochemical effects as drugs of abuse.” The study specifically showed that feeding rats a daily 10 percent sugar solution (equivalent to typical soft drinks) did indeed induce tremors and chattering teeth:
http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v16/n9/full/oby2008328a.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306452209001869

Then there’s Scripps neuroscientist Dr. Paul J. Kenny, who writes in Nature Neuroscience that repeated consumption of fatty, sweet foods produces the same effects in the brain as escalating cocaine intake:
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v13/n5/abs/nn.2519.html

Just as with drug abusers, increased substance abuse blunts dopamine receptor sensitivity, leading to cravings for ever-increasing doses to achieve the original pleasurable effects.

Rather than continuing to be misinformed by your blog, if your readers want to learn more about addictions (and how to overcome them), they should read this instead: http://getonthepath.blogspot.jp/