Book Review: Wired to Eat by Robb Wolf
Introduction
Robb Wolf is the guy who made paleo famous, and the funny thing is that over the years my diet has evolved into paleo (with the exception of dairy), without really even knowing what it is prior to reading this book (it became popular before my time in this field). In this book Robb talks a lot about “the neuroregulation of appetite”- this is a super interesting topic that not many people have covered to my knowledge and it’s so important. What the GLP-1’s (the class of weight loss drugs) made so clear is the fact that weight loss is not a metabolism issue, it’s an appetite Issue.
7 Major Takeaways:
Robb argues that if you are not fat or sick in our modern westernized society you are screwing up. As the title states, you are “Wired to Eat” anything and everything, and in our modern world that’s easier than ever due to the hyperpalatable foods.
I Will just quote Rob here… “The challenge is that our food, sleep, activity, gut microbiome, stress levels, and emotional connection to food all affect the neuroregulation of appetite in potentially unfavorable ways”. Essentially this means that the reason some people are not always hungry is not just a food thing or a sleep thing, it’s everything together.
The big reason a lot of us are metabolically unhealthy is because society has evolved at a rapid pace, however our bodies have not, there is a major disconnect here.
Although there may be some debate as to if food is really addictive, mechanistically it is clear that eating food we like stimulates dopamine in our brain which creates a positive feedback loop.
There is something called palate fatigue where you can only eat so much food before you get tired of it, even professional eaters for example can only eat so much ice cream, however by adding a new taste (salt for example) it can bypass the palate as a novel stimuli and you can keep eating. As a society we have done an amazing job creating millions of different flavors and textures, which stops us from being able to neuroregulation our appetite.
The gut may be a major player in the neuroregulation of appetite. Although a lot of things are still unknown about the microbiome, one thing that seems clear, a correlation, is that the more diversity in the gut the better. It just so happens that in industrialized western society, we have way less diversity than even someone in Japan for example. There also seems to be a link between diversity of the microbiome and allergies, autoimmunity, and inflammation.
I did not fact check this last fact, but it makes sense to me… that a pathogenic shift in our microbiome can occur independent of weight of a caloric surplus, meaning eating pro- inflammatory junk foods can lead to microbiome and digestive issues even while being at a healthy weight
Conclussion:
I really liked Robb’s approach to this book. I think the most important thing that he was able to talk about that most other books never mention is appetite and how everything else affects it. Also unlike other diet books, he talked about sleep, movement, and community which all play a crucial role in overall health.
Amazon link Wired to Eat by Robb Wolf
Wired to Eat by Robb Wolf