Addiction is a broad subject studied in clinical psychology. In the context of food, what comes to my mind is a 'push-pull' relationship between an individual (us) and addictive food. What force in an addictive food pulls us towards it? And what force in an individual (us) pushes us towards addictive foods? Let's see.

Not all foods are addictive. For example, plant foods like carrots and broccoli in their natural form are not addictive. But animal products (meat, fish, eggs, dairy), processed foods and extracts (oil, sugar) are addictive. What makes them so?

Biochemistry of addictive foods: The articles at Which Foods Are Addictive? has videos by WFPB doctors who explain the biochemistry underlying these foods and how they impact our brain. I encourage my friends to watch two videos in particular: Calories per Pound (8 mins, 2020) by Dr Alan Goldhamer, and Cut the Calorie-Rich-And-Processed Foods (6 mins, 2020) by Dr Greger. The latter video uses this acronym: Calorie-Dense-And-Processed (CRAP) Foods. What's unique about CRAP Foods?

"Calories are condensed in the same way plants are turned into addictive drugs like opiates and cocaine: *concentration, crystallization, distillation, and extraction*. They even appear to activate the same reward pathways in the brain. Put people with 'food addiction' in an MRI scanner and show them a picture of a chocolate milkshake, and the areas that light up in their brains are the same as when cocaine addicts are shown a video of crack smoking."

Through videos and articles in Which Foods Are Addictive?, I learnt that two types of foods are addictive:

• Calorie dense foods: In a calorie dense food, we derive a LOT of calories from very little food by weight or volume. For details, Calorie Density.

  All animal products (meat, fish, eggs, dairy) are inherently calorie dense. Among plant sources, only nuts & seeds are calorie dense. Fruits, vegetables, grains & beans have low calorie density. However, we may increase the calorie density of plant foods via dehydration and extraction. For example, we can eat far more dried plums than actual plums. Similarly, we can eat far more potato chips than actual potatoes from which those chips were made from. And we can eat far more spoonfuls of sugar or oil (both are calorie dense extracts) than the beets or sugarcanes or olives from which these sugars and oils were extracted.

  Summary: all of these are calorie dense foods: extracts (oils, sugar), processed foods (with copious amounts of fats and sugar), dehydrated foods (chips), animal products (meat, fish, eggs, dairy).

• Processed foods: Often prepared with calorie dense ingredients and chemicals that enhance the taste and texture to make the final preparation addictive. Food packaging, food ads, and food marketing campaigns also contribute to repeated consumption of processed foods.

In addition to Calorie Rich And Processed (CRAP) Foods, I can think of two more foods which are addictive:

• Pulverized grains (flours): Flours are listed as a yellow-light food at ForksOverKnives ("to be consumed in moderation"). Chef AJ lists flour addictions as one of the addictions that we must overcome for weight loss.

  What makes flours addictive? Wall Off Your Calories explains how pulverization of grains breaks apart more cell walls, therby making their nutrition (mostly starch) available to us.

• Homemade, sweetened foods: Even these are addictive! This is an advanced WFPB guideline but good to know. See the discussion at Do Added Sugars Make Us Sick? for an explanation. Even though the article focuses on artificial sweeteners, the reasoning applies to homemade sweetened foods too.

Easy access to low cost, addictive foods: Why are addictive foods so readily available in the market? See What is Driving the Obesity Epidemic?. It contains an 11-part video series by Dr Greger. He touches upon the role of processed food industry, food marketing, corporate influence on dietary guidelines and taxpayer subsidies, all of which come together to create an environment around us which makes abundant amounts of unhealthy & addictive foods available to us at low cost.

Cheese: Among addictive foods, cheese needs special mention. It's one of the most addictive foods out there! Dr Neal Barnard has published videos and books on milk and cheese addiction, especially the role of 'casomorphin', a morphine-like compound found in dairy products.

• Chocolate, Cheese, Meat and Sugar (40 mins) by Dr Barnard. The first 5 to 10 mins pertain to milk and cheese. Dr Barnard is a wonderful speaker. He narrates stories and packs them with information.
• The Cheese Trap (320 pages, 2017) by Dr Neal Barnard.
• The Science of Cheese Addiction (12 mins; YouTube) — not by Dr Barnard but informative.

Lack of Knowledge: What's healthy? What's not? Many Americans follow Standard American Diet, which are poorer in nutrition than USDA guidelines. The vast majority of Americans (nearly 9 in 10) do not eat sufficient fiber or sufficient potassion or enough fruits and vegetables — see Nutritional Deficiencies Among Americans. Whole Food Plant-Based (WFPB) doctors explain that WFPB guidelines improve upon USDA guidelines significantly.

But wait a minute! What exactly are all these guidelines? And why do they use complicated words for invisible substances like 'fiber', 'antioxidants', 'saturated fats', 'trans fats', and so on? Why are these guidelines not explained in easy-to-understand vocabulary using real foods? It would help to educate ourselves. See Gain Confidence Through Knowledge.

Managing Our Emotions: Sometimes, we gravitate towards unhealthy, addictive foods because of unresolved psychological trauma. This is a delicate subject, covered in this article: An Emotional & Spiritual Journey.

Social Pressures: Many of us gravitate towards addictive foods because our family or our friends or everybody at our workplace is eating them! Standing out may be difficult.

Here are some ideas that come to my mind:

1. Conviction through education: We need good reasons to stay away from foods that WFPB doctors encourage us to stay away from. This requires education. Gain Confidence Through Knowledge explains how to educate ourselves. We must not have any lingering doubts. For long term sustenance of Whole Food Plant-Based in our lives, it will help to have clear reasons for staying away from animal products (meat, fish, eggs, dairy), processed foods and extracts (sugar, oil).
2. Insulation from toxic food environment: What is Driving the Obesity Epidemic? has Dr Greger's 11-part video series in which he explains the role of processed food industry, food marketing, corporate influence on dietary guidelines and taxpayer subsidies. We get bombarded with food ads on television, magazines, billboards, coupons, … everywhere! We have fast food restaurants even in hospitals! [See this article and this video by Dr Greger] How may we stay away from all these ads and these restaurants?
3. See unhealthy foods as unhealthy: Many of us have developed a mental association between addictive foods and positive feelings for such foods. For example, after having followed healthy habits diligently for an entire week, some of us 'reward' themselves with an unhealthy food: an ice cream or a big bar of chocolate. Instead of associating positive words like 'rewards' with unhealthy foods, we must see unhealthy foods as they are: unhealthy. Non health-promoting. We must change our vocabulary and how we think and feel about unhealthy foods. Alan Carr's techniques mentioned in a section below may help us towards this goal. The same idea is also mentioned in the book Fat Free Forever (116 pages, 2008).
4. Befriend healthy food eaters: Having like minded friends is super helpful. In order to adopt any new lifestyle habit, it helps to develop a circle of friends who are in love with exactly the same habit! In India, we use the word 'sat-sangati' :-)
5. Keep no unhealthy foods at home! Why buy an unhealthy food at all? Cleaning up our pantry and fridge is super helpful. This way, we'll be forced to eat only healthy foods when we feel hungry!
6. Stay away from processed food sections at supermarkets: We can do most of our grocery shopping from only 2 sections: the produce section (fruits, vegetables & herbs) and the bulk section (with grains, beans, spices, nuts & seeds). Only a few items need be bought from other sections: tofu & some frozen foods like frozen sweet corn and frozen peas.
7. Stay strong for the first 40 days: In this video, Dr Neal Barnard says that it takes 30 to 40 days for our taste buds and brain to get used to new food. So if you can stick it out for 40 days, the transition is likely to be successful. The book The Pleasure Trap (225 pages, 2006) by Doug Lisle and Alan Goldhamer describes the psychology behind making changes in food habits.
8. Set up an emotional support system: Recognize that you're doing something difficult. We may experience emotional lows. Having somebody to talk to and share our challenges is helpful.
9. Make changes with a buddy: Two people making a change is so much easier! We are able to brainstorm ideas; we don't feel that we're doing it all alone. Two good friends or two members of a family (siblings or parent-child or partners or …) doing it together is powerful.
10. Psychological help for healing from trauma: If we have a tendency to gravitate towards unhealthy foods due to unresolved past trauma, it's best to learn techniques from psychology or spiritual literature and stay firm.
11. Give it time: Adopting a new food system is a lot of work. We can't get it right within a few days. It may take several weeks, possibly a month or two before recipes start turning out right. Also, our taste buds keep changing as we simplify our food system further and further. Expect to settle down into a new food system in three to six months. And expect to keep learning new things for almost one to two years.

Source: Buddha Doodle for 6 Dec 2017

Sometimes people think that it's okay to 'reward ourselves with tasty but unhealthy foods' after pursuing a clean food system for several days. But such an approach is problematic. It has to do with our choice of words.

Instead of characterizing such foods as "tasty and unhealthy", if we see them as "addictive, disease causing & cancer causing", we are more likely to overcome our food addictions. And if we are an ethical vegan, we may also remember phrases like "full-of-cruelty-n-suffering" when we think of consuming foods with animal products like milk. If we're an environmental vegan, we may introduce terms like "planet-heating, environmentally devastating" for foods with animal products like milk.

In addition to verbalization, if we can also visualize disease and cancer whenever we see such unhealthy foods, our propensity to consume such foods will diminish. If we happen to be an ethical vegan as well, we may choose to visualize all that pain & agony that a mother cow (and her calf) have to go through to give us milk in the modern world.

The author of this book advocates the strategy outlined above: Fat Free Forever (116 pages, 2008). This book explains that words are powerful; we must choose the words that we speak to ourselves wisely.

This question often comes up when de-addicting ourselves of some unhealthy food source like cheese or refined sugar. When we experience, "I feel like having 'cheese' or 'paneer'. What is a substitute?", one thing that might help is to recognize that we're addressing something powerful: cheese addiction (in general, dairy addiction).

Once we recognize that we're tackling something difficult, our approach is likely to change. For example, instead of thinking "How may I substitute X?", our approach might take a different flavor: "How would I go through a de-addiction program? What will work for me?" and our minds start opening up to a broader set of interventions.

For some people, having a support person with whom we can share our daily struggles for 5-10 mins on phone, along with reaffirmations that we'll stay strong — that might help. For some people, doing this as a group of like-minded individuals is helpful. There are dozens of such ideas in de-addiction literature. As a rule of thumb, it takes about 30 to 40 days to get over food addictions through strict adherence. So we have to stay strong for about 4-5 weeks, that's all. And the days on which we have the strongest urges should only be a few, not daily.

A few days ago, I came across this popular book on smoking de-addiction (3,000+ Amazon reviews, 4.7 rating): Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking (256 pages, 2015). I was wondering if this technique could be adapted to help us with de-addiction from Processed Foods or Animal Products or SOS Extracts (Sugar, Oil, Salt).

Interestingly, Allen Carr did write Lose Weight Now: The Easy Way (192 pages, 2014). This has only 3.6 rating. why? Turns out 21% of the reviewers gave it a 1-star rating — they were surprised that Allen was recommending a diet with 'no processed foods', 'no animal products' in his book and speaking negative things about both of these food sources. Basically, he recommends a healthy vegan diet! Such a diet is very close to WFPB Diet — what's missing in Allen Carr's book is the 'No Oil' guideline.

Allen Carr's weight loss book is reviewed here — the author didn't like the book because they didn't want to turn vegan.

… so Allen Carr's books and techniques may be helpful to some class of individuals who kinda half-know that processed foods and animal foods are unhealthy but seek fortification through practical psychological artifices. I haven't read this book myself but Allen Carr's clinics have interesting ideas for de-addiction.

I believe that gravitating towards simply prepared plant-based foods is also An Emotional & Spiritual Journey. Such foods make our mind calmer. As we calm down, an opportunity arises for old memories to arise from our sub-conscious to our conscious. These memories are concomitant with bodily sensations and emotions which may create urges to eat unhealthy foods in those of us who have used unhealthy foods as an 'escape mechanism' to numb such bodily sensations and emotions in the past. In order to retrain our minds to simply observe such bodily sensations and emotions to arise and pass away, we need to equip ourselves with some techniques. These techniques may be learnt through modern psychology (de-addiction techniques taught in clinical psychology) or through spiritual traditions (meditation, for example). A healthy support circle also helps.

Do our taste buds change after a few weeks of eating healthy? Yeah!

After we have cleaned up our food system of animal products (meat, fish, eggs, dairy), processed foods and extracts (oil, sugar), we feel free! Even if somebody places preparations with these foods in front of us, we don't get attracted to them. In fact, some of these foods may start causing us nausia. Many people report that after having left meat and cheese, the sight and smell of meat and cheese makes them uncomfortable. At the same time, we start enjoying the subtle flavors of various fruits & vegetables!