food vs. meth

after watching a documentary from national geographic about the drug 'meth', i've been thinking about food.

quick rewind: dopamine makes people feel good, released by the brain to reward the body for doing 'good' things, like eating food and having sex. now, meth fools the brain into releasing dopamine by the truck load. it's easy to see how people can get addicted at the first hit. fast forward.

then michael commented on my blog "dude, are we having dueling food blogs?"

this got the old dopamine creating gears a-turnin'. of my last 10 blog entires, 6 are centered around food!!

food provides much satisfaction. we eat food not for the fuel it provides but for the satisfaction it brings. this is bad. i quickly realized that i'm a watered down meth addict, and my meth is food.

meth addicts lose their teeth and scratch off their skin. food addicts get plump and pudgy in all the wrong places. meth addicts will do anything for a hit, food addicts will drop $75.00 on a decent piece of meat accompanied by some vegetables and a glass of fermented grape juice.

the documentary referred to meth as an epidemic, statistics like "80% of crime in some po-dunk oregon city was meth related". obesity has often been coined as an epidemic.

we sure love our dopamine releases don't we?