Sugar Is The Heroin Of The Masses: Dr. Barnard Gives Advice On How To Kick The Habit

by Nicole

Dr. Neal Barnard MD is to vegetarianism what Al Gore is to environmentalism. His lectures on the benefits of a plant based diet are smart, entertaining, down to earth, and offer hope rather than peddling despondency.

The son of a cattle rancher, Barnard trained is psychiatry, but has spent much of his life focusing on the impact of diet on human health. He had a job at McDonald's while at high school, but, while working as an assistant at a morgue during a year out before medical school, experienced first hand exactly what a modern Western diet does to the insides of those laid out on the morticians slab. He now serves as PETA's medical adviser, and is a committed, and evangelical, vegetarian. But don't let that put you off. Whether you're a carnivore or a herbivore, we can all benefit (and indeed have) from the good doctor's wit and wisdom.

As the president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (an organization which Bernard founded in 1985), he took the government to task for their fudged dietary guidelines.

"Of the 11 members on the committee, six of them had ties to the dairy industry, meat industry or egg industry," says Bernard. After he prevailed in court, the government issued radically revised guidelines in January 2005 (though as we mentioned in our previous story, these guidelines still massively underestimate the servings of fruit and veg needed for a healthy diet).

Barnard believes that much of the illness we experience today is a result of what we eat, and that much of what we eat is addictive, and pushed on us by food corporations whose major concern is the size of their own bottom lines, rather than the size of our bottoms.

In his book, Breaking The Food Seduction, Barnard writes about the opiate effects of foods, and gives advice on how to kick our bad food habits. He reveals that sugar works like heroin, and dairy like morphine, so it's not surprising that the food industry has us right where they want us, craving our next chocolate fix.

For those in need of a dietary intervention, he suggests that you familiarize yourself with the four new food groups (grains, legumes, vegetables and fruit) and give them a three-week trial period (which will give your body, and your taste buds, enough time to adapt). For those ready to cut the beef and go cold turkey, he offers these seven basic tips:

• 1. Start with a healthy breakfast (you'll snack less the rest of the day).
  
• 2. Use foods (such as beans and pasta) to hold blood sugar steady.
  
• 3. Dieters: Use the rule of ten for minimum calorie intake.
  (For example, if your ideal body weight is 150 Ibs, your minimum intake should be no less than 1,500 calories per day.)
  
• 4. Break craving cycles.
  (Resisting the bad stuff today, will make it easier tomorrow, and the day after that.)
  
• 5. Have regular exercise and rest.
  (It's easier to make the correct food choices if you're well rested.)
  
• 6. Use social support. Don't do it alone.
  (Go to the Betty Ford Cheese Clinic with a friend.)
  
• 7. Take advantage of other motivators.
  (Bernard tells young males that they'll be less likely to be impotent when they're old if they eat well today, and reminds animal lovers of the million animals per hour that die so Americans can have the privilege of eating badly).
  

| 04/17/08 | Health