What is one of the best things wecan do for a happy food life–and life in general? Ramping up our “intentionality,” says Jeff Karp, author of LIT (Life Ignition Tools.)
In a recent podcast, Karp explained that if we really want to lead our best lives and do our best work, it’s critical to understand one of the biggest things we’re up against. And that is:
“The $900B spent on marketing and advertising every year to hijack our attention and serve us someone else’s definition of importance. That’s like whoever controls the algorithms can potentially control us and actually is controlling a lot of us.”
Ultimately, we become “pawns in somebody else’s game,” Jeff explains, making us “susceptible to just living the algorithms that the powers to be want us to live. We’re buying the products that others are deeming important for us, we’re upgrading our phones and doing all the things they say.”
(Does that sound a lot like recent newsletter articles about how food marketing dictates what we eat?!!)
The Good News We have an incredible level of consciousness and an amazing evolutionary inheritance of neuroplasticity, where our brains are constantly rewiring themselves. So we can use our consciousness to be intentional in our thoughts and our actions, to intentionally rewire our brains and create patterns that serve us and serve our communities.(1)
Enter A New Eating Culture This is what the New Eating Culture is all about: Rewiring our brains so we decide for ourselves what foods best serve our health, free of any marketing influence.
Desensitization A different podcast featured spiritual teacher Jeff Carreira, who described how discombobulated he became after a 3-week retreat in India. Re-entering the “real world,” he was overwhelmed by the crush of ads that bombard us every minute and hour. The experience made him realize how he (and probably all of us) have become so desensitized to this noise that we don’t realize that we’re swimming in waters toxic to our health–and maybe toxic to our general happiness, too.
Resensitizing ourselves to external food marketing forces is probably a key step in following Karp’s advice to become more “intentional in our thoughts and actions.” I find it helpful to use imaginary “blinders” and “ear plugs” that help me ignore/overlook 90% of the advertising babble I see and hear.
(1) Interview with Tami Simon on Sounds True. Jeff Karp, PhD is an acclaimed biomedical engineering professor at Harvard Medical School and MIT, a Distinguished Chair at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. His book is LIT (Life Ignition Tools): Use Nature’s Playbook to Energize Your Brain, Spark Ideas, and Ignite Action.