Dr. Mark Hyman explains why your brain craves junk food and how processed foods hijack your chemistry. He offers practical strategies to break the cycle through diet changes and understanding your emotional triggers.
Hi, this is Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome to my weekly house call, your chance to ask me your questions. And this week's question is, Dr. Hyman, I love junk food and I can't stop craving it. What do I do? I don't want to be sick. I want to be healthy, but I can't stop eating the junk. You're not alone. There are literally hundreds of millions of people who crave junk in this country. Why? Because the food that we're eating is biologically addictive. and how does that happen? It's because we are programmed genetically to crave sugar and refined carbs. And here's why. You know, when we evolved as hunter-gatherers, if we could find some honey or berries, we would binge so that we could store all that fat for the winter. I mean, I was in Alaska not too long ago and I saw the grizzly bears and they were binging on salmon in the river and it was fatty and full of protein and they could not gain weight. but then they go up into the mountains at the end of the summer and they binge on berries, sugary sweet berries. They gain 500 pounds, they become diabetic, obese and hypertensive, and then they sleep all winter. The problem with us is we just keep eating all winter. So we are biologically programmed from our primitive brains to crave sugar and to eat as much as we can whenever we can. The problem is that gets out of control in our modern society where we have 600 food products on the market, 80% of which have added sugar. There's sugar for breakfast, sugar for lunch, sugar for dinner. I mean breakfast cereal, it's 75% sugar. It should be called dessert, not breakfast. So we are programmed to crave sugar and the food that we have been introduced to in the 20th century has literally hijacked our taste buds, hijacked our brain chemistry, hijacked our hormones and our metabolism so that we are stuck in this vicious cycle of craving and hunger. And it's not an emotional weakness. It's not because you're a glutton. It's not because you are weak-willed and have no willpower. Willpower just does not work if you are biologically hooked on sugar. For example, if I told you to hold your breath for 15 minutes underwater and I would give you a million dollars, you couldn't do it. Why? Because you crave oxygen. And in the same way your brain is set up to crave food. So, and particularly sugary processed foods. I always say there's no such thing as junk food. There's only junk and there's food. Or what I call food like substances. You know, when I was in Haiti not too long ago after the earthquake, I was starving because we hadn't eaten in three days and the military showed up and I asked for one of their food rations called MREs. And I was so happy to get it. And I had the chicken and dumplings because I felt like I needed some comfort food. And I went and heated it up. And as it was heating up in the thermogenic pack, I looked at the ingredient list, and there were about 500 different ingredients, and I could not find chicken on the label. It was a chicken-like substance. So we are mostly not eating things that are real food. And when we eat real food, it changes all the dynamics. And I think, you know, we don't realize how insidious this problem is. The food industry literally has hired craving experts that they stick in these taste institutes to find what they call the bliss point of food, to create heavy users. That's their own inside terminology. In fact, I had dinner with the Vice Chairman of Pepsi not too long ago, and it was quite an interesting dinner. And he told me with great pride that they had harvested taste buds from humans and put them in a laboratory culture, and they were able to stimulate them to find what maximally stimulated the taste buds to create maximal craving, maximal addiction. And he was proud of this fact. I think this is scary. This is what I call Frankenfood, or frank and science. So what do you do about it? How do you deal with this? Well, you can fix it. And the reason that most of us crave sugar and carbs is because, one, we eat too many of them, and two, we don't eat the right foods that help shut off the cravings. So I was speaking to one of the researchers at the NIH, the National Institute of Health, and he was explaining to me that he'd been doing research on the brain and found out the real regulator of our weight and our metabolism is not necessarily our stomach, or our metabolism, it's actually our brain chemistry. And fat literally shuts off the addiction centers in the brain. And protein also does the same thing. So when you look at what you eat, you need protein and fat in the morning and at lunch and at dinner and for your snacks. And yes, you can have carbs. Carbs are fine. You can have vegetables, those are carbs. Nuts and seeds are carbs. Whole grains are carbs. Beans are carbs. Those are all fine. But they're real whole food carbs. and they're not highly processed. Think about how many steps the food you're eating took to get from the field to your fork. Was it a hundred steps or was it, you know, a broccoli is a broccoli. I mean, think about it. You want to eat food. Avocados don't have a barcode. Almonds don't have an ingredient list. And eggs don't have a food label with the nutrition facts label on it. You don't need them because they're just what they are. That's a really simple principle for eating. While it's true that most of our cravings and addiction and our food behavior comes from abnormal hormones and biology driven by eating junk food and sugar and processed foods, sometimes it's emotional. And I know that is with me as well. So what I ask my patients is to ask themselves two questions. What am I feeling and what do I need? What am I feeling? Am I feeling tired? I need a nap. Am I angry? I need to yell at somebody. Am I lonely? Do I need a hug to call a friend? Am I frustrated? What do I need? And how do I get that need filled? Not by stuffing my face, but by actually meeting that need. So stopping a little bit or just putting the fridge sign that says, what am I feeling? And what do I need? can often go a long way to helping you reset your emotional patterns for eating. So just remember, it's not your fault if you're craving. It's not your fault if your taste buds have been hijacked and your metabolism and your hormones and your brain chemistry have been hijacked by the food industry. that's what they want, but you can take them back. And it's quite simple, and that's why I've written my books, 10-Day Detox Diet. It's literally a sugar detox or the blood sugar solution. These are great resources. There's great breakfasts in there, shakes, all sorts of tools for you to actually succeed in helping you rewire your brain to end cravings forever. So I'd love to hear your story. If you've struggled with cravings, struggled with food addiction, struggle with craving for junk and not being able to get off it, tell us how you've dealt with it. Tell us your struggles and Let's learn from what we all know as a community. And if you like this video, sign up for our weekly newsletter and share this video on Facebook and Twitter and send me your questions@drhyman.com so next week I may make a house call to you.
