I had dinner a couple of nights ago with three high-school buddies. We get together once a year, usually when the one who semi-permanently lives in Europe comes back to Canada to visit family. Throughout high-school and university these guys were always slim and athletic. Now in their mid-fifties they are all overweight/obese and suffering from a host of illnesses, most notably diabetes, which each has in varying degrees and stages. While two can still control it with medication, the third has developed diabetic nephropathy and is wait-listed for a kidney transplant.

If you work in the medical area, you don’t need to read the U.S. Surgeon General’s report to know that diabetes is reaching pandemic proportions, almost directly in tune with rising obesity rates. In fact, diabetes is considered the #1 threat to health care in developed and emerging countries, threatening to basically crash our ability to deliver health care in the next 20 years (if not sooner). And if you didn’t get it the first time: Diabetes is directly related to overweight, making overweight the #1 health issue in the world today. Unless you’ve been doing a Rip Van-Winkle, this probably isn’t news to you.

There are two Holy Grails in obesity research these days: First, the hope for a “magic bullet” compound that will block food’s ability to induce a pleasure response in the brain. Shut down the pleasure, you shut down the desire to eat…sounds simple, right?  Acomplia (Rimonabant) is the first such Endocannabinoid System blocker to reach the market (in Europe) and while it seems to work it also has a nasty side-effect…suicide! It seems that if you take away food’s ability to provide comfort and pleasure, for some people at least, life isn’t worth living anymore!

The second Holy Grail has come to be called “Intuitive Eating”. This means getting back in touch with the brain/body’s need for food as sustenance and pleasure rather than food as drug. People like Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) guru Paul McKenna (I Can Make You Thin), neurophysiologist Will Clower (The French Don’t Diet Plan), and pundit Michael Pollan (In Defense of Food), are all strong proponents of rekindling a more intuitive and sensual relationship both with food and with life, i.e. “Eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re not”. I’m not sure where the term originated, although the claim for its origin is being made by dietitians Tribole & Resch, who penned the 2003 book by the same title. It really doesn’t matter what you call it…at the end of the day its all about reevaluating your emotional and behavioral relationship with food.

For millions of overweight and obese people, intuitive eating holds the promise of becoming “normal” once again and breaking the master-slave relationship inherent in overeating. I’m a little skeptical….hey, if I could eat intuitively, I wouldn’t have a problem with my weight! Of course the premise is that we are all born with that intuition but lose it along the way as we also lose touch with our internal world. Maybe. Let’s hope so.