Maddy- Thanks for your extensive and useful suggestions for coping with food
and sugar cravings. Personally, I think your idea about brushing one's teeth
and gargling with mouthwash to be the most helpful, and something I have done
for many, many years as an effective way to stop myself from continuing to eat
just because the food tastes good.

I think it's important to realize, additionally, that most of our cravings in
this society stem from the exposure to and conditioning to eat manufactured
and non-Paleo foods. Foods of this type (French fries, chips and dips, sodas,
ice cream, doughnuts, candy, etc.) are no longer even "food" by any Paleo
definition, but have become drugs. A drug, even one made from a natural source, is
extracted and highly concentrated and when consumed will produce some
pharmacological or supra-physiological effect. Thus when presented with foods in their
unadulterated state, (take dandelion greens as an example) we would not find
ourselves bingeing on them beyond what our bodies needed. It is the salt, fat
and sugar that we are addicted to and crave, and often have no built in STOP
mechanism to deal with. It is little different from becoming addicted to
alcohol, cigarettes, or heroine.

The book Lights Out has been mentioned frequently on this list, and besides
their lifestyle suggestions, the authors present many useful ideas as to why
our food choices have gotten us into the medical fix we are in today.
Outstanding is the notion that in Paleo times, higher carbohydrate foods would have been
plentiful in the summer when days were long. In winter, we would have had no
lights after dark, and little or no high carb foods available, thus providing
us with a guideline as to what our own present day food consumption should be.
In the end, unless one actually moves into a cave to live off the land, there
will always be temptations that must be dealt with. They aren't going to go
away, and often it does take an enormous dose of will power to not eat that ice
cream sundae that everyone else is chowing down on around you.

Maddy Mason
Hudson Valley, NY