F.R.I.E.N.D.S Intelligence

To maximise the possibility of living healthily and happily in this obesogenic world, we can make conscious choices to protect ourselves from the relentless push to consume calories. To illustrate the difference that conscious choices can make when buying, preparing, and consuming food, let’s imagine there are two people, named Bob and Alice, throughout this journey. Bob and Alice live in the same city, work similar hours with similar levels of stress, share similar financial situations, and have access to similar supermarkets and restaurants. Bob and Alice both find that their fridge and shelf are empty and decide to go to the supermarket. Bob decides to go immediately. With his car keys grabbed, off he goes. Bob does not pay attention to his hunger right now. He hasn’t eaten anything in the last four hours, and ghrelin is building up in his bloodstream, sending signals to the hypothalamus to increase the urge to eat. His brain’s reward centre is also activated, partly because of Bob’...

With a relationship with food defined, let’s see how the modern world is dragging us into permanent holiday mode. For over 300,000 years, the human brain has developed a very simple rule regarding food: find carbohydrates, find fat, and find protein, then eat as much as you can. Our physiology has also evolved into an extremely efficient machine for using or storing every molecule of carbohydrates, fat, and protein. For example, a healthy human body will have exactly zero sugar (representing carbs), fat, and protein in urine. If there are even tiny amounts of sugar or protein in someone’s urine, it indicates that this person has a non-trivial medical condition (diabetic if urine has sugar, or kidney malfunction if urine has protein, and serious digestive problems if fat appears in urine). That the healthy body prevents each drop of carbs, fat, or protein means that, after millions of years of evolution, our body has become so accustomed to an environment where nutrition is scarce that ...

Relationship with Food There are many relationships everyone needs to develop and maintain in life. Some are necessary, while others are optional; some are simple, while others are complex. Relationships with partners, friends, and colleagues are often complex. Throughout life, these choices are optional—we can choose our friends, change jobs to have new colleagues, decide with whom to partner, or even choose not to marry. Relationships with finance are necessary but can be straightforward (simply spending earnings). The relationship with food, however, is absolutely essential (a person with an average first-world lifespan will eat about 80,000 times in their lifetime) and complex (considering health, weight control, diet, allergies, mood, social factors, exploring the world, family traditions, culture, fun, cravings, alcohol that entices, enriches, and encloses us…). Let’s introduce a framework based on five attributes to break down the complexity of the relationship with food. Using ...