The compulsory cycle of semi-satiating Snickers Grabbing

The compulsory cycle of semi-satiating Snickers Grabbing


A man in a suit lightly touches his stomach as it begins grumbling
while he waits in traffic. The hunger monster ( or so we shall call it
) has paid a visit once again. This time with more vigor and
motivational desire to satiate its cravings. In this rapidly moving
rat race economy, we are lead by an invisible donut on a string on a
stick. Hopping from one craving to another driven by crashes and
drastic hormonal changes in the infinitely complex and beautiful
landscape of the human body.

We are entranced by the color saturated advertisements that line our
roadways, neighborhoods and inner cities. Sugary, fatty and salty
concoctions light up our craving centers. We are operating off
primitive neurobiological programs in a modern world where we can get
carb loaded and heavily oxidized fatty snacks at a press of a button
or quick walk to a convenience store. Key word: Convenience.

Our ancestral drives are etched in to seek out the most caloric dense
and satiating pieces of food in a landscape that use to be
predominately based around scarcity. It was the best use of efficiency
with what we had in order to survive and maximize energy for the next
so called hunt. Now with the availability of an almost peculiarly
infinite amount of food and food like substances, we can satiate at
each whim whether driven by an empty stomach, stress or the addictive
withdrawal from sugary consumptive psychosis.

“Just think that all these years of evolution have guided us to where
we don’t even have to get out of our motorized vehicles to get our
food. A perfect marriage or convenience, comfort and complacency. The
Triplicate C-Word Cohesion.”

Food advertisements invade our sphere of consciousness with reckless
abandon. Television commercials, billboards and now the pervasive
repetitive loops of online insecurity grabbers have tricked our minds
into craving those calorically rich and mostly devoid of nutritive
substantial junk food materials through the flashy food photography,
colors, trending music and picturesque modernly happy relationships
both romantic and jovially friendly on the surface. So you see the
hook now do you? Bite.

“ The mere thought of a tasty treat can have profound effects on our
internal chemistry. We salivate. We trigger the craving and our
insatiable appetites for caloric and decadent  density. How do the
colors and the placements of the food ads around us influence our
behaviors? How much of it is conscious? When I say potato, do you want
cheese and sour cream with it?” Did I get it right?

A over spilling of delectable abundance based upon a Mass Manufactured
paradigm of over satiation and the promise of repeat customers. A real
hook into the Ancestral Drive. An exploitation of our inner most
intimate cravings and desires. No more running from Tigers. The Tigers
are mostly are feelings now.

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They say that we are what we eat. How so? I mean what are we, but mere
vehicles for our gut microbiome considering they tend to rival the
number of cells that exist in our bodies. In any case, what we are
feeding “us” is a more or less a type of collaborative super organism
of interacting chemical reactions and life. This is a big thing to
think about when you get down to it. What are we feeding in or bodies
and what kinda groups of bacteria are we attracting from our eating
habits. How will you feed and build that colony of bacteria in that
gut of yours? The way we eat affects the way our organs operate, the
way our hormones interact and fluctuate, the ways our cells use fuel
and communicate, our moods and how we choose to interact with the
world around us. Fascinating stuff when trying to debate whether or
not to eat that second donut.

Ritual. Mouth. Stuffings.

All these tempting junk food stuffs are ingrained with all the
activities of our modern economies. Are you going to hang out with
your friends? Is there going to be food? Is there at least going to be
a moderately drinkable alcohol like substance for me to sip on and
possibly get a buzz from? All adequate thoughts and questions that pop
up into our consumer conditioned minds. It seems to make sense that
you can have a food pairing with all different activities that
definitely do not require any temporary mouth pleasure intake. We even
lose patience with the fact that we have to wait for our food in the
first place. This is where the Appetizer Industrial Complex shines
through and tempts us to spend that extra 10$ only to make us not
finish the rest of our actual meals. But alas, we have an infinite
array of to-go containers where we can pack up the food we could not
finish and either leave them in the car or fridge too long and forget
about about a week later. Oh the struggle of simply not deferring
gratification, just to realize you might have not been that hungry in
the first place!

You always take your Appetite-to-go.
To Ponder:
Do we sometimes just eat because we are “bored”?

The intimate relationship between emotion and the consumption of such
things as candy bars and chips are like two snakes intertwined around
an apple. Oh the imagery! It seems like an easy fix to grab a quick
and pleasurable snack to swat away that appetite bug and raise your
insulin levels just enough so that in a few hours you will feel the
Crash and Burn of simple carb dependancy. This brings us back to the
convenience covenant between flashy packaged food like substances and
our modernly deceived dopamine receptors and digestive tract
sensitivities. Well from an evolutionary perspective, ( pushes up
glasses to top of nose ), it makes sense that we would be addicted to
the act of eating when we have everything that our sugar, fat and salt
driven minds are accustomed to right in front of us in copious and
ubiquitous quantities. It is very important to observe how we got here
in the first place and how it affects our cravings and hormones in the
modern world.

Thought Experiment:
“ Imagine a Hipster with a bow and arrow trying hunt down a Clif Bar.”

It should be of no surprise that we are anxiety ridden consumeristic
apes floating in between cravings and insulin spikes. A quick and easy
visit to the store in search for a finely colorfully packaged carb
riddled and sugar packed treat will surely get us through the next
couple hours until the next feverish urge arises in our (out of whack)
circadian rhythmic bodies. This new snack culture pleads for us to
keep up with that creature within us that catches us in the tide of
carb dependency and sugar push and pulls.

“Got an ailment? There’s a pill for that and most certainly a Sugary
Snack for that!”

Oh the blessings of instant gratification and the anticipation of
reward. No longer do we need to struggle to find sustenance across the
plains and landscapes of scarcity and variations of fertility in an
age of vending machines and the occasional box of donuts brought in by
a coworker. ( It seems as if all or most office workers always go for
the leftover cake.)

So we are hypnotized under the guise of this snacking amalgamation
algorithm that has seemed to find itself a place between our cortisol
laced busy lives in the modern world. This is where slogans such as
“Gonna be here for awhile? Grab a Snickers!” and “Gimme a Break! Gimme
a Break! Break me off a piece of that KitKat bar.” Also, let’s not
forget the “Once you pop you can’t stop” alliteration littered slogan
that has seeped into the consumeristic unconscious. Can you see the
manipulation of our psyches and taste buds? They( The Advertisers that
of course are making a comfortable living ) know what they are doing
and most of them love to do it knowing that they will have repeat
customers with addicted taste buds and compulsory habits.

“ They have you by the throats, tongues and stomach.
Most likely without you even knowing it. You with your big eyes and
stomachs. Your Big appetites and Big Ideas. Well, what’s the Big Idea?
The Big Idea that is You. The one with the Eyes as Big as your
Stomach. An ever expanding donut glaze of a stare and brain fog casts
its shadow over your satiated body. Satiated now and irritable later.
A cyclical compensatory cycle of urges, addictions and desires. Meet
you in the middle of the Food Court in an hour, a sugary salty
concoction awaits your Simple Carb Dependent Food Hole.”

Grab and Go. Always on the Go. Empty Stomach. Fleeting motivational
moods. Wavering feels of fatigue and Empty Calorie infatuation!

You Think, Therefore You Eat!

What are we really in service to in regards to hunger and appetite?
Are we mere slaves to that have been conditioned to by society,
culture and the people we grew up with? It’s truly an interesting
thing to think about. We can look back through our memory banks and
most likely recall times where we have hastily stuffed our mouth holes
with things that we knew would give us that quick fix and slight pep
in our step. It’s all good and fun once in awhile, but years later you
can look down onto the floor of your passenger’s side foot area to see
the magnificent sprawl of wrappers, bags and even crushed cans. ( I’m
of the realization that some of us don’t get that messy, but for the
effect you can get the picture of the devilish unconscious workings of
habit formation.)

What’s that smell? Funny how food smells are linked to memories. Oh,
the sweet apple pie that your grandmother made. The beef stroganoff
that almost made you levitate from your armchair. Let’s not forget the
aromatic smell of a fish fry and barbecue. Those little molecules
travel along way to trigger our pleasure sensors and rev up our
appetites. Manipulation of the most delicious degree I tell you!

-- Metacognition/ Thought Snacks --

It seems as if with each thought there could be come accompanying
snack that goes it. With each hormonal shift and stress response, a
little stress goblin lights up in our brain making us more impulsive
to grab at that small bag of gummy bears. I mean it is a small bag
after all. This is where they get you. That hook that you so easily
bite and get pulled into a habitual ritual of junk food binges and
mindless snack sessions.

Humans seem to be more “rationalizing” creatures than “rational”
creatures. This may explain our incessant peaks and valleys of
appetite and hunger triggering mechanisms. I mean you needed that
sugary boost right? It was a long day. A long and stressful day. What
a better way to resolve your problems temporarily then to reach for a
thoughtfully manipulated “Health Food” bar to relieve your pain.

Savory and Sugary Satiations in an Age of Sedentary Sacraments and
Lack of Sacrifices.

We invent words in our culture such as “Hangry” to almost give us a
sense of license to act bitchy and unbecoming in a moment of fatigue,
stress and withdrawal. It seems rather sophomoric to make such a
trending almost #hashtag worthy labels that describe of lack of
Nutritional Consciousness. Sugar has been used as a pain reliever in
the past. You know it works. you know that that little spike of Sweet
Goodness can deliver you from the evil stresses of the modern world.
What a nice relief. An unsustainable and potentially debilitating
relief. But a nice relief nonetheless.

If you take the old “step back” and look at your patterns of your
sugary snacky past, you can see how it has subtly guided your various
decisions throughout the days, weeks and months. We get caught in the
habit of rushing from one place to another while constantly being
tempted by Fast Food and Future Trash around us. All that flash for a
few seconds or minutes of mouth pleasure. It rolls back to that
convenience factor mentioned beforehand. Why would we want to plan so
far ahead and forgo the grab and go serpent that entices us at every
turn? We may try to be as healthy as we can and go outside of our
lanes every once in awhile, an that is ok. It’s not all about trying
to force or even stress and healthier relationship to the foods around
us. It’s about noticing when such cravings arise and not immediately
feeding them or repressing them. A very meditative act indeed. It’s
about seeing those cycles that seems to rule the minds and stomachs in
others and ourselves. It’s a fascinating look into the environment we
live in and how it manipulates our behaviors. How much are we even
aware of the way we eat and how we eat it?

Are we looking at a screen while we much on a meal or are we truly
invested in the act of chewing and savoring? It almost seems that
simply sitting down and enjoying and being present with the act of
eating  is almost a subversive act in this modern world. It seems that
most of us have the insatiable need to have some other type of
distraction whether a phone or any other entrancing screened device.
Do we even see ourselves doing that? Can we even have the patience and
nobility to only devote our time to just eating wonderfully prepared
food? Great questions.

It feels as if this “act of eating” has lost its flavor. We are more
concerned with the conversations surrounding the food and getting that
Full Feeling more than the actual food itself. Sometimes it catches us
off guard. We may suddenly be thrown into a state of flavorful
disarray forcing us from our cyclical thought patterns. It throws us
into a state of presence and the act of eating is reinvigorated with
our being. This is indeed one of the spices of life. The Sacred Act of
dining and feeding ones soul stomach.

Meditate on the Presence of Eating a Peach with the intention of truly
being with the beach. As if you can almost absorb the Fructose Sphere
through a spiritual act of Osmosis. But don’t forget to chew.

We are eating with our eyes while gently seducing our other stomach
brain. Enticing it for a flavorful ride. As Wendell Berry put it, “
Eating is an Agricultural Act.” Some of us had been raised on saying a
simple grace before we engorge ourselves with delightfully prepared
food compositions. It was that act of gratitude whether religious or
secular, that transformed the mere act of eating from a porcelain
plate to more of a sacred ritualistic act centered around community
building aspects and sometimes painfully enlightening conversations.

Ah yes, Dinner Time! The echoing of a dinner bell or the compassionate
call from a motherly figure that allowed us to drop what we were doing
and pining over and join in a feast no matter how big or how burnt the
mashed potatoes are. It’s a labor of love. A sacrament or a
therapeutic act of cooking and feeding others. You get that warm
“Serving High” when cooking food for others. Like pouring meaningful
gravy into a meaningful gravy boat. Where have we gone wrong in all
this?

Our conspicuously consumeristic patterns and symptomatic strategies
have led us to compartmentalize, fragment and bastardize our
relationship with food and how we eat food. In this modern world, we
have driven ourselves to not see where our food comes from and how it
makes us feel. The instant gratification and the cheap food satiety we
so find ourselves involved in, has lead us to treat our bodies like
mechanistic automatons dependent on a materialistic culture of
convenience, pleasure and hormonal and digestive manipulation.
Certainly, we can learn to look at our shortcomings and how we use our
fridges, pantries and anywhere we choose to consume food. We can sit
down and observe our RELATIONSHIP with the living material that we
stuff our mouth holes with. Where does the remaining packing or scraps
of food go? Is there a better way to live? Is there a better and more
healthfully conscious way to exist? It’s not about a quick answer or a
diet. It is about observing and ultimately listening to what our
bodies need. No need to force. No need to try to look for a Broad
Brush Solution for everyone around you.

Hungry? Listen. Ask yourself some questions without trying to
lustfully grab for answers. That is what might have gotten us in this
unhealthy food relationship in the first place.