Food Overdose 
by Jonathan Bowden, M.A., C.N. 

My best friend Billy recently adopted a border terrier, named Ivy, and my 
wife and I promptly became godparents. (Dog people will understand, don't 
worry if you don't ...) Anyway, recently we were visiting them and we noticed 
something peculiar about little Ivy. 

She had trouble jumping up into our laps without assistance, which is 
something she always does effortlessly when we see her. She moved about the 
crowded room slowly. When she finally struggled up into our lap, she promptly 
fell asleep. 

'What's up with the dog?' I ask my wife. Smilingly, my wife responds. 

'Why, it's simple,' she says, stroking the puppy's distended little belly. 
'She's food drunk.' 

Now what's interesting is that every time I've told this story, virtually 
everyone in earshot nods knowingly, even though they may never have heard the 
term before. 

Food drunk. The dog, normally a completely fearless, animated little 
energizer battery was disoriented, sluggish, sleepy and, well, drunk. Sound 
familiar? In the wild, a dog like Ivy knows exactly what it's meant to eat. 
Her canine ancestors scavenged for food, just as ours did, and over eons 
learned what was 'good' for them and what wasn't; they learned to avoid what 
was poisonous and to seek out what was nurturing. If they didn't learn that 
lesson, they died, and their survivors presumably had better instincts for 
being smart about what to eat. In other words, they learned to know what 
their bodies needed. 

But let an adorable terrier loose in a party full of revelers who can't 
resist feeding it everything from chocolate covered peanuts to homemade cakes 
to cheese balls to cold cuts to Rex's homemade brownies, and it 
appreciatively gobbles it all up as we all smile and say how cute it is. 

We've all been Ivy. And we've all been 'food drunk.' Only more often than 
not, we call it bingeing. 

Food is powerful medicine. It has the ability to affect our mood, our energy, 
our sense of aliveness, our strength and our endurance. And, like medicine, 
the wrong kind in the wrong amounts can, if not kill you, at least ruin your 
day. 

Not to mention your self-esteem. 

Like our canine brethren (dog lovers will understand, and forgive the 
technically wrong use of the word), we too evolved from hunter-gatherer 
societies where we learned to understand what our bodies needed. Furthermore, 
nature cooperated. It put in our path what we were designed to 'run best' on. 

The emergence of the 'paleolithic diet' as one of the hottest research and 
discussion topics in current nutritional thinking bears testimony to the 
importance of this concept. And what we were meant to 'run best' on was some 
combination of what grew, was plucked, could be gathered, hunted or fished 
for. We knew intuitively how much or how little to eat, because we needed to 
know that to survive. 

I don't think nature anticipated the Christmas office party. Or the wedding 
buffet. Or the modern-day supermarket. 

Confronted with choices that are so stunningly diverse -- packaged, 
manufactured 'food products' that bear little resemblance to anything like 
live foods -- surrounded with modern day supermarkets which offer all of 
these conveniently, instantly and usually round-the-clock, many of us do what 
Ivy did at the Christmas party. 

We overdose. 

And because we can no longer count on our environment to cooperate with us by 
putting in our paths only wholesome, nutritious foods that let our bodies 
burn the food equivalent of 'clean energy,' we have to make a substantial 
effort to get back on track. 

The constant exposure and easy access to a stupendously obscene amount of the 
wrong kinds of foods makes it harder and harder to rely on what our bodies 
tell us. When the caveman craved sweets, it meant he needed to climb the 
nearest tree to pick a fruit that was rich in vitamin C. When we crave 
sweets, it means eat a Twinkie. 

That's why diets do sometimes work. We've become so acclimated to doing what 
our bodies want, rather than what they need, that we can no longer tell the 
difference. Diets provide structure, and structure can often be the path to 
reeducation. 

When you want to kick a drug habit, there's ultimately only one way to do it. 
You need to do whatever it takes to really understand what your body feels 
like and functions like 'clean' -- without the drug. 

Does that mean you can never have a fun Christmas Eve like Ivy did? No. But 
it does mean that, like Ivy, you'll be a much happier puppy if you eat the 
foods that nature intended for you. 

 

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