More About The Shangri-La Diet

To recap: As I mentioned in yesterday's blog post about the Shangri-La Diet, the heart of the diet lies in decoupling the brain's association between taste and calories. This can be accomplished two ways:

1) Consuming extremely bland calories
2) Eating foods with unfamiliar flavors

Roberts states that the stronger the brain's association between a flavor and calories becomes, the more we crave that food, and the more it raises our set points, making us hungry and driving us to eat more. This means, according to Roberts, that the rise in obesity associated with the consumption of processed foods and fast foods is largely because these foods -- he calls them "ditto foods" -- taste exactly the same every time we eat them, creating an unnaturally strong association in the brain between that always-the-same taste and calories. This would explain the reason why so many people appear to be addicted to, say, Big Macs but not to home-cooked hamburgers, to Coca-Cola but not to homemade lemonade. Because these foods are unnaturally identical every time we eat them, they jack our set points up to the skies, and make us crave them.

Interesting stuff.

Roberts suggests something called "crazy spicing" to create unfamiliar tastes, so as to avoid this powerful set-point-raising association. In crazy spicing, one sprinkles several randomly-chosen spice blends over one's food, creating unfamiliar flavors. Unfortunately, for many this spoils the experience of eating, since a pizza with cinnamon, curry powder, seasoned salt, and barbecue rub will taste different, all right, but will not necessarily taste good.