There is a well kept secret in our food industry : Food influences our behaviour. It is easily seen if you consider food that is addictive. Food with a nice ration of fat and sugar (1:1) makes us come back for more. That returning it is behaviour. But fat food does more than that. It causes mild eurofia because it restricts oxygen to the brain, it makes us sedative because it messes with our metabolic system, it also makes us more flexible because the fat is used in the brain to give new pathways a speed advandage (by isolating the axons).
The influence of food on our behaviour becomes even more clear when we look beyond basic calories, fat, sugar, carbohydrates (which we think is the reason these categories where created). Proteins (or their constituents amino acids) are very important in our diet, all the important stuff in our body is protein, the cellular mechanism, the structures of organs, the muscle. You can’t make them out of fat or sugar or carbonhydrates. It is like there’s the fuel and the machine. The fuel is sugar etc. the machine is protein. It is amazing how little protein we need each day, only grams. There are Vitamin category proteins, ones we can’t make ourselves. Then there are non-vitamin proteins we still need plenty of but can be lacking in our food. They can alter our mood, change the way our neural system functions, make us feel energetic, and if they are lacking in our diet we may suffer from all kinds of ailments.
Our diet is not only determined by what we choose to eat, but also by the nutritional value what we can choose from
We are triggered to write about this because we read that Roos Vonk, a professor at the Radboud Universiteit has been allowed to look into the effects of eating meat on the (male) sense of superiority. It is strange to us that this kind of hypothesis and testing it is such a challenge. If eating meat didn’t have a certain effect on men (and woman, but the idea is that men are especially sensitive) then why would they in some cases insist on eating it? In a tribal setting it makes sense that whoever brings in the meat feels superior, because meat is such powerfull food compared to scrubs etc. in a food poor environment. Also we observe that our psychology has a habit of making us adapt to whatever situation we are in. So if there is meat we must feel like hunting, if we are physically weak we must lay low. My own research into emotions and cognition showed that for complex reasons we psychologically adapt to our real capabilities, so we become less bold if we are weak, more bold if we are strong, yet the strongest individual will be layed back.
“That’s the meat to fat ratio you want!”
This reseach is significant because it can open up a can of worms in terms of the influence of our environment on our behaviour. One example is the bromide fire retardants in computers we wrote about early. They are hormone disruptors. Being very sensitive to them I notice them in every office. Especiall laptops that get very hot produce a lot. They cause neural damage and screw with your manhood/femhood. Why is there so much of that stuff and why is information about it so rarely brought out? Is it because the subtle effects make us behave in a desirable way? Does it produce less manly men, less feminin females? We can all see women have suffered from bad hormones or they would all have a real waist. You can also recognize women coming from outside the western world because they have one!
A diet that makes people egocentric is economically desirable. People will all want stuff for themselves and not share, increasing the number of things sold.
Another example is the rise of autism. Whatever the cause, some say it is disturbance of gut bacteria by Monsanto Roundup/Glyphosate, it is happening. It is not natural that is for sure. Does it change our decision making and behaviour? Of course! What to do if really in 2025 50% of all children is autistic? We can go on and on with examples of how food influences us, and how we are told to enjoy it so that our behaviour changes. Example : Chocolate. It makes us love what we know, so in fact it makes us more egocentric. Coffee : It makes us more focussed and it serves as a mini achievement, status symbol in our otherwise inconsequential office lives. It is the Soma of choice that allows corporations to get to our cognitive capacities. Lots of choices there.
Zinc is low in most foods, but very important for brain function. Breakfast cereals however contain lots of it. So eat cereals or be dumb.
The meat industry is one that drives a lot of economic activity, it sells a lot of fossil fuel and thus it is a pillar of the fossil fuel economy. It also brings forth (by its fat and actine which helps our brain to function) men that are arrogant and unapologetic about eating lots of meat, especially bacon (which if full of carcinogens). These are often depicted as superior and owning everything men want. How convenient! If meat eating makes men feel superior they want to have MORE because they think they deserve more, which is ideal because it makes them economically mobile. They are not content and will spend money on stuff that they feel entitled to. What would our economy look like if we didn’t have all kinds of dudes feeling they should be upwardly mobile? Meat eating may be a significant driver of our wastefull consumer economy.
Of course this has relevance for climate action and climate change. The meat industry is a major factor, almost 30% of emissions are caused by it. Water use is shocking. The abuse in modern US meatfarms is soul destroying. We should get rid of it asa-fucking-p. But if all this industrial activity that largely takes place outside the control of any voting citizen, that is regulated into the system (for instance in school nutrition) over years of lobbying the now 100% corrupt congress (and of course in Europe the EU/EC) it is part of a wider control system. If it sets an important course of society (the impulse to ascent in the meat eater) then fighting it and ‘freeing’ consumers from its influence will be very politically impossible.
The basic question that is ever harder to answer is : What would a normal person do. Because what we eat can change us and we should certainly find out how.