Food (and other things) as Drugs

Many elements of our lives serve a drug-like purpose including television, food and exercise.

Research supporting the drug-like effects of television isn’t even new.  The quick cuts and other editing effects unavailable to us in our everyday lives trigger something called the “orienting response.”  When we lived in constant danger of being eaten by predators, fast movement and quick changes in scenery got our attention very quickly.  Television capitalizes on this instinct and pulls us in.

If television is a drug, what are its effects?  It immediately relaxes people, perhaps because our orienting response requires a kind of oneness with our environment to fully process quick movement.  Once we turn it off, though, we feel immediately tense as the more abstract worries of the day come rushing back.  Producers know this, so they’ve cut out commercial breaks between shows and start new shows right after a previous one is done.  Why turn off the TV when a new show has already begun?  The system is engineered to promote addiction.

Michael Stipe (of REM) was being interviewed in a bar with televisions and kept complaining the the interviewer that he couldn’t concentrate on the questions because he couldn’t help but get pulled into TV images.  TV images are about as easy to ignore as the smell of fresh baked tollhouse cookies.

Television for young children seems espeically harmful--possibly contributing to autism--so it would seem that we should approach it with extreme caution.  No “TV as babysitter” for kids four and under.  There is a massive level of brain development as well as honing of fine and gross motor skills during that time.  Television is the last thing a human at that age needs.

But what do about families that need to work numerous jobs in order to pay rent and feed the kids and use television to keep a toddler out of trouble?  How about longer maternity or paternity leave, just like every other country but the U.S. has?  Give parents--from any social class--time to raise their kids.

The whole question of television watching gets a bit trickier as your child gets older.  My son, who is nine, loves cheese.  I did as well at his age (and still do).  Many kids will eschew meat, vegetables and fruits in favor of as much milk as they can drink.  Kids also love sugar and chocolate.

Every food in that list has drug-like effects, and some might argue that they are addictive.  Cheese contains tyrosine, which calms people in times of stress.  Chocolate also increases levels of tyrosine and contains the stimulant theobromine.  Milk calms people through tryptophan.  Robert Lustig, a reputable dietician, has proven with mathematical precision that the refined sugar in a soft drink has the same systemic effect as the alcohol in a beer (he discusses this at 1:20 or so).

Do we really want to start worrying about any food that has a drug-like effect?  Tropical fruits such as pineapples, mangoes and bananas are so sweet that they might promote highs in kids similar to those from refined sugars.  But aren’t these also highly nutritious?  Grass-fed beef contains essential fatty acids, which can protect against depression when consumed in moderate amounts.

Everyday activities, then, can work as prescription drugs as well as illicit ones.  Don’t we want some of these good drugs?   During a workplace seminar years ago, the presenter stated that every time you cross something off a list, you get a surge of happy chemicals in your brain.

The phenomenon of “runner’s high” is well-documented.

Music stimulates dopamine, a pleasurable neurotransmitter associated with searching or hunting.

“Hunting” for something on the web also boosts dopamine.  Pornography ramps up dopamine during the search and then floods the brain with it during climax.

How much can we possibly prohibit, caution against, or ban?  

And at this point, I haven’t even touched on “hard” drugs like alcohol (yes, it’s as bad as many of the others), marijuana, cocaine, and heroin.  Chocolate also triggers anandamide, one of the active ingredients of marijuana, so we’d better watch out in case anyone tries to eat enough unsweetened chocolate to trigger a cannabis high.

What do we do with all of this information?  We can’t ban anything that might be a drug, because everything in our environment functions as a drug.  Sunlight promotes vitamin D production which makes us happier.  Working towards an exciting goal--learning skateboarding tricks, cooking a new and exciting recipe, writing a blog post such as this one--all boost dopamine levels.

Do we just give up and put our six month old in front of the television?

How about a cost-benefit analysis?  Most of the evolutionary triggers for neurotransmitters--exercise, accomplishment, healthy fats, etc.--are clearly beneficial.  The enjoyment we get from music and reading doesn’t seem all that bad either.

How about movies?  We seem to enjoy those--and learn from them--even if there’s some kind of sedation involved from the medium.

The “do we ban it?” question seems absurd most of the time, considering most of us don’t want the government telling us everything we can or can’t consume.  But excess in any area--video games, drinking, even strenuous exercise--seems like a bad idea for most people and should probably be approached with caution.  We worry about someone who drinks a six pack of beer a day, so why shouldn't we worry about eight hours of TV each day?  They’re both harmful.

But moderation seems to work most of the time.  Why not have a beer or two?  What’s wrong with being addicted to a television show?  Why not take up bike racing if the pain point of exertion gives you a high?

We need to look at these things and consider them.  I don’t think Alcoholics Anonymous is a perfect organization, but they have some important things to say about addiction in their survey.  There are some of the more obvious problems--passing out drunk, for instance--but the idea that strikes me most (a paraphrase of questions 6, 7 and 12) would be “Is this addiction interfering with relationships, work or other areas of your life?”  This seems to me like a great evaluative tool.  Certain things that might initially seem harmful--low-level marijuana use, for instance--suddenly don’t seem that bad.  Others, like video game addiction (which I had to quit at one point) suddenly seem more harmful, because they can crowd out social interaction.  

But cheese and chocolate are always good.

Speak

In Tanya Barrientos’ essay “Yo Hablo Espanol,” she describes her humiliation and frustration with the looks she gets because she doesn’t speak fluent Spanish.  She was only a toddler when her parents moved to the U.S. from Guatemala, and they made a conscious decision for the family to assimilate.  Spanish would not be spoken, and therefore little Tanya, perfectly fluent in English, would not be subjected to to the stereotype of the “lazy Mexican.”

Later, as America embraced cultural diversity and rejected the “melting pot,” Barrientos found herself barred from the Latino community.  She was not a true Latina because she spoke Spanish like a gringo in Spanish 101.  But she also wasn’t accepted in mainstream white culture because of her high Inca cheekbones and last name.

I found myself relating to the story as I was teaching it but wasn’t sure why.  I have never spoken any language regularly except for English.  But then I remembered: my speech was considered odd for most of my life until ninth grade.

When I was five and my brother was three, our family moved to Bath, England for six months on a Fulbright exchange.  My dad taught at the community college there, and his colleague--at whose house we stayed--taught at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City.

Bath has some historical significance in England, but it’s not exactly a metropolis.  Our address was “Up Yonder, Box Hill.”  The neighborhood seemed somewhat provincial.

Children regularly threw rocks at my brother and me because of our American accents.  I particularly remember walking along a narrow path with a tall hill on the right.  One child was talking to me animatedly—something about “wearing your Sunday best”--while another child waited on top of the hill out of my sight.  I suddenly felt a pain in my right eye and blood on my face.  The cut from the rock was on my eyelid.  The kids took me home and helped me clean it up, repeatedly emphasizing that I was to tell no one what happened.

I am also now right-handed based on my trip.  I initially wrote with my left hand but was corrected until I started writing with my right.  Apparently writing with one’s left hand was consider a sign of demonic possession.

(This story is not meant to imply that Brits are backward.  I don’t doubt that I would have been an outcast in the American South with my northern accent, and a Southerner would likely have faced a similar fate in Michigan).

By the end of my trip I was officially welcomed into the fold by the other children.  This was likely because I finally spoke like a full-fledged Briton.

When I returned to the U.S. to enter first grade, I received a number of odd looks based on my accent.  In second grade, I remember trying to say the word “cat” and realized I could not--I pronounced it “cot.”   During one recess a couple girls on the playground repeatedly asked me to say words and then broke out laughing whenever I spoke.

After a few years I completely forgot about the issue and entered middle school.  At this point I started getting picked on.  My guess is that this related to my being short, shy and nerdy--and being in middle school.  I became vaguely aware that I didn’t speak like those around me and decided to try to do so in order to “fit in” better.  The cadence of my speech became more choppy and the tone more nasal.  I began to clip my “ings” and started to sound more like a Michigander.  A teacher I’d had for AP History in eighth grade told me during his ninth grade logic class that I’d lost my accent.

I have no idea if this effort did me any good--I was ignored in tenth grade, which was worse in my mind than being ridiculed--but the changes stuck.

I haven’t minded sounding more like those around me, but a Northern Michigan accent is not without its problems.  Another Michigan resident I met years later--a woman I was trying to impress--was proud of her Canadian-sounding accent while stating that mine was closer to that of a Yooper (the half-endearing, half-derogatory term used to describe residents of Michigan’s upper peninsula).  My Ohio-born wife also has poked fun at me for pronouncing “salsa” as a nasal “sayalsa.”

As someone so frequently ridiculed for his accent, I should be more tolerant towards others’ speech, but this hasn’t always been the case.  My brother and I as teenagers were not above mocking our mother, who was born in Indiana to parents who moved North from Georgia.  We especially liked imitating her clustering of verbs, such as “Can you run go find the towel for me?”  Our all-time favorite, though, was when some minor issue would come up--a dropped sewing needle for instance--and she would yell “Goddamn bloody fucking son of a bitch!” loud enough for any impressionable teenage house guest to hear.

I am also fond of an Ohio friend’s story of teaching in Tennessee and a student’s informing him that he “smoked a pop.”  My friend was puzzled and tried to figure out how a soda could be smoked.  The student repeated “smoked a pop” until both became frustrated with the exchange.  My friend finally realized that the student “smoked a pipe.”

Unlike Barrientos, I don’t have to worry about basic fluency.  But I still sometimes think about the way I speak.  I hesitate whenever someone asks “How are you doing?” on whether to say “well”--revealing potential snobbiness--or “good,” which implies that I am a man of the people but do not necessarily know my grammar.  

But I don’t worry any more about getting rocks thrown at me.