In this week’s Eyes About column, Send in the Twix Bars, author Teresa Martin discusses the intersection of technology and weight management. Like Teresa, I was right horrified at some of the technologies under development, including a “food condom” to prevent food absorption and a gel pill that expands to make us feel full. To me, these are continued examples of the deteriorating relationship we have with our food.
Teresa rightly supposes that in fact technology is partially responsible for our current obesity epidemic (and its related maladies of diabetes, coronary disease and cancer). We all spend more time planted in front of a computer or post PC device, there are more channels to watch, and new innovations make our life easier (read: less exercise). I can chart my own weight gain from the day I bought that Mac Plus in 1988.
From a production standpoint, food technology now makes it easier to produce and manufacture food and foodlike substances (as Michael Pollan calls them). As I’ve pointed out in the past, the motivations of food producing corporations are very simple, to make a profit for their stockholders. Decisions about food safety and the health implications of manufactured food are made primarily as they impact the bottom line. Food techs are constantly devising new combinations to appeal to our craving for the three basic food groups; salt, fat and sugar.
With all this, consuming food and FLSs can easily be an unconscious act. The result is obesity, and it is much easier to “take a magic pill” than face the fact that the answer to better weight management and therefore health comes from looking more deeply at our relationship to the food we eat. As with any dysfunctional relationship, it’s easier to delude ourselves that everything is OK than to announce, “honey (or high fructose corn syrup as the case may be), we need to talk.”
It is in fact true that we can use technology to help us in the food fight. Nothing quite so grand as the EndoBarrier (nor as profitable, to be sure), but common web technology today, combined with the right applications, can link us to good information, to people who can counsel and coach (like me), to others with similar interests and stories, and to tools that can help us track and monitor the food we input to our bodies. Technology gives us tools to bolster our awareness and help refine intent.
So as we look at our relationship to food, we can look at our relationship to technology as well. Just as having more awareness of our food relationship can have a positive impact on our health, so it is with our relationship with technology. A little less web surfing, a little more walking. We don’t have to sacrifice, just approach it with more intent.
How does technology impact your relationship with food?
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Gee I thought I had been keeping track of my weight for a long time but you have me way beat in 1988! The good thing I see about having access to my weight history is it shows me current frustrations are only temporary AND it shows where I started 70 lbs ago.