A little Bit of Everything Is Too Much

It’s Thanksgiving. Everyone brought a dish: sweet potatoes from Aunt Wilimenia, cranberry sauce from Sister Ethel, pecan pies with Texas pecans from Uncle Rupert. There is turkey, sage dressing, mashed potatoes, grilled Brussel sprouts, home-made rolls, pumpkin chiffon custard, and sautéed green beans. Oh what a feast! How silly to think that you won’t overeat. There is too much variety and novelty of foods, and that’s the problem. Your brain loves novelty: new tastes, smells, flavors. It isn’t your fault; your brain is captivated by all this newness, seducing you into eating more than is prudent to maintaining your proper weight.

Additionally, certain foods trigger other foods: burgers and fries, fish and chips,  hot dogs and beer. Imagine eating just hot dogs at a baseball game. Can’t be done; you need the beer. It’s a conditioned emotional response that involves salt, sugar, and fat. It’s hard to resist. The Force is not with you on this.

From research done in 1981 by Barbara Rolls and her cohorts at Oxford University, we know that when given just one flavor of food, we get bored with that flavor and stop eating. Oatmeal for breakfast once in a while is tolerable; oatmeal every day for breakfast is not. No one overeats oatmeal. This is interesting because people who eat the same foods day after day do not have a weight issue. It is the introduction of a constant variety of foods that triggers our brain to keep sampling and snacking.

On the East Coast I saw lots of all-you-can-eat places, which included cheap, not-so-healthy food. The problem is the variety of choices. A little of this, a little of that. Oh wait, there’s something over there to try. Just a little.

It makes sense, then, if you are looking to drop a few pounds, you have to trick your brain so it doesn’t waylay you with food. Pick foods you like, but not a huge variety to eat at meals. When you feel hungry between meals, eat all the celery you want. One food can only go so far before you stop eating. Even chocolate (gasp) can be overdone, for all us chocoholics.

Stuffing yourself now and then happens to all of us. We run into trouble when we have too many choices from which to choose. We either choose nothing, because it is too many choices, or we sample everything. What we might consider is…less choice. We don’t need everything now.

That’s Aging Intelligently.