The Food Philosophy will show you how to lose weight, feel genuine choice and control around food and set yourself free from overeating for the rest of your life.
This morning's health news is interesting for Food Philosophers. There are reports of a study that shows that women respond to hunger differently than men and that they are less able to suppress it. Another study mentioned in the report says that obese women have a "much stronger reaction than normal-weight women in brain regions related to reward".
You can find the report here
Anyone who has studied a Food Philosophy course will understand the reasons why this study has come up with this conclusion and most of us could have predicted this outcome.
The report says:
"Faced with their favorite foods, women are less able than men to suppress their hunger, a discovery that may help explain the higher obesity rate for females, a new study suggests.
Researchers trying to understand the brain's mechanisms for controlling food intake were surprised at the difference between the sexes in brain response."
That researchers are surprised at this difference just shows you how far ahead we are in our knowledge of the psychology of compulsive overeating and I am proud to be part of a growing community that actually has a deeper understanding of the problem than the scientists and medical experts studying it!
"There is something going on in the female," Wang said in a telephone interview, "the signal is so much different."
There most certainly is! And it most certainly is NOT because of...
"different nutritional needs for men and women"
...and neither is it because it's...
"linked to gender differences in estrogen and related hormones,"
These suggestions for causes, as Nora Volkov (co-author of the study and my absolute all- time heroine) is quick to point out, are speculative - which means that they don't know the reasons and the interviewing journalist has pressured her into guessing at an explanation, which has then been published, leading nicely to the suggestion of a typical media health report style possible solution to obesity in women:
"...training in reducing food desires or in reacting to food cues could be effective treatments to combat obesity."
I should be used to it by now but I still find myself shaking my head in wonder at the utter obviousness of it all and how the truth is not just so blatantly ignored by the media but how the public is so clearly steered as far away from the truth as you can get!
What is the most obvious difference between men and women where food, overeating and obesity are concerned? Would you say it is hormonal? Would you say it is because men and women have different nutritional needs? Would you say it's because our society has more food available and that we are the only species that is hard wired to eat ourselves to death in the face of food abundance?
OR would you say it is more likely because women are unrelentingly exposed to extreme pressure to change their body shape by dieting and restricting food and men aren't?
Over-exposure to pressure to feel dissatisfied with our body shape and resultant food restriction is the very first track that scientists should be going down because it is the most obvious. But they won't go down this track. They rarely do.
I wonder why?
Duh.
The Food Philosophy has gone down this track and that's why we understand more than the 'experts'.
Sx
