Yellow Fat Person - © Unknown

Dieting: ‘Demand Control’ Doomed From The Start?

The phenomenon of the ‘failed dieter’ has loomed large over the whole issue of weight control since the ‘dieting’ – classically defined as the restriction of food intake – began. Now, researchers say this example of ‘demand control’ is doomed to fail for most who attempt it…

Fat Woman Eating - © Daily MailHere she is, again: Our poster girl for morbid obesity. Would changing
the ‘food environment’ help her control her weight?

Rather than concentrating on supporting and encouraging food intake restriction as a means of losing and controlling weight, Dr. Michael Lowe of Drexel University says society should be looking to ‘supply side’ controls to discourage overeating, which leads to unwanted weight gain and, ultimately, the scourge of obesity.

According to Lowe, the most pressing problem is not dieting itself, but the collision of the modern food environment – where food is always available, and much of which is unhealthy – with our immutable evolutionary heritage that drives us to find and consume food whenever it is available. The situation is exacerbated when a prospective weight loser has a genetic predisposition to weight gain.

The fundamental problem

Low insists that the widely-accepted theory that a restrained eating regimen (a ‘diet’) is the key to weight control, developed by University of Toronto professors Peter Herman and Janet Polivy in the mid-1970s, actually has the ’cause’ and ‘effect’ elements of the issue backwards.

In fact, Lowe insists, obesity and eating disorders such as anorexoria and bulimia are the symptoms and consequences of a ‘toxic eating environment’ that started developing in the 1970s and continues to the present day.

What they found

“If someone goes on a weight loss diet because of unwanted weight gain or loss of [eating] control […] then dieting will at least temporarily improve these conditions,” Lowe observes. “Just as taking methadone is a consequence of a pre-existing susceptibility to drug addiction, dieting is usually a consequence of a pre-existing susceptibility to obesity or loss of control eating.”

The takeaway

Lowe concludes, “The single best way to curb dieting is to make widespread changes to the food environment, both societally and within the home. Helping individuals understand that dieting is more a scapegoat than a villain should refocus people’s concerns on the true source of our obsessions with eating, weight and dieting: a food environment that is as unhealthy as the ‘tobacco environment’ was in the 1950s.”

My take

Lowe’s ‘supply-side control’ theory makes logical sense to me. And it explains why diets don’t work in the long term for most folks. But is it possible to to change the supply side of the food environment? I don’t think big business would stand for the kind of extremely restrictive controls that would be required on their products and advertising practices to make the necessary changes in the food environment.

What are we going to do? Legislate massive changes in Fast Food restaurant menus and ingredient lists? Close the burger and pizza joints altogether? How do we change the current smothering influence of the processed food sector on our eating habits? Could any amount of research or reformulation produce such a thing as ‘healthy’ processed foods? The questions just keep on coming…

I also wonder if Lowe’s comparison, of the current ‘toxic’ food environment and the ‘tobacco environment’ of the 1950s, is entirely valid. Maybe I’m naïeve, but isn’t there a fundamental difference between the two? I mean, everybody needs to eat. But nobody ‘needs’ to smoke. But I can certainly see how supply-side controls – sky-high taxes, limiting advertising and billboard-sized health warnings on product packaging – have had a significant effect on tobacco use.

Still, I have a gnawing suspicion that simply changing the food environment (as far as that’s possible) won’t be enough – by itself – to make inroads on the obesity or eating disorder fronts. But that begs the question, “What else should we – more to the point, can we – do to support that effort?”

~ Maggie J.