This is Your Brain on Food
seedmagazine.com
seedmagazine.com
This made me curious, so I googled it. The very first result is a scientific study demonstrating that unripe bananas are a great remedy for diarrhea: http://www.worldchiropracticalliance.org/tcj/2000/aug/aug200...
I stopped reading the article after this, fearing that the author did not do his homework.
Even though there are many sources touting unripe bananas as a folk cure for diarrhea, an article from the 'World Chiropractic Alliance' wouldn't be my go-to source.
But maybe I shouldn't be expecting better from pop science?
What is there to possibly be skeptical about in this article? Why did you put quotes around chemicals? His point was everything that exists is a chemical and is processed by the body as a chemical. I'm more skeptical as to whether or not you read the article than anything presented in it.
I'm putting quotes around the word "chemicals" to refer to the use of the broad term "chemicals" to mean "chemicals with long names that are psychoactive, not like water and stuff." Every single use of "chemicals" in that article could be replaced with that, so I'm pretty sure the author's talking about "chemicals" and not chemicals.
As for what I'm skeptical of... I thought I made that pretty clear? That chocolate has some amount of phenethylamine and anandamide in it is meaningless without knowing a) how much of those chemicals is present in the food and b) how much of a psychoactive effect that amount of chemical would have on a human. Just from glancing at Wikipedia from those two chemicals, I'm guessing it's not as much as that article wants you to think.
No, you are completely missing the point. He was attacking the mythical duality you are perpetuating. There is no binary distinction between psychoactive and non psychoactive chemicals. Water IS psychoactive. Protein in chicken IS psychoactive. Sugar IS psychoactive.
Let's take chicken for example. We can turn that into a chemical with a long name quite easily! Assuming you are consuming low fat chicken, the majority is protein. Protein is a bunch of chemicals called amino acids. One of the most common amino acids by weight in chicken is (2S)-2-amino-3-(1H-indol-3-yl)propanoic acid, Tryptophan. Tryptophan is THE building block of serotonin and all other tryptamines your body produces.
Are you aware 2-(1H-indol-3-yl)-N,N-dimethylethanamine (DMT) is responsible for dreaming and near death experiences is synthesized in your body directly from that chicken and could not have been synthesized without it?
Sugar->Glucose-> 6-(hydroxymethyl)oxane-2,3,4,5-tetrol. Sugar has clear and obvious excitatory psychoactive effects on the brain. Some researchers even think cognitive decline\Alzheimer's may be related to insulin resistance in the CNS similar to diabetes.
The author tells you exact dosages in the article for the amount of Nutmeg you need to consume to hallucinate. He gives more than enough numbers for an opinion piece.
Regarding chocolate you can test your wrong hypothesis quite easily. Buy pure, NON-alkalized cocoa powder in the store today and consume 3 tablespoons.
Your bringing up tryptophan is the classic example of what I'm talking about. Someone notices that turkey has tryptophan in it, tryptophan is psychoactive on paper, and suddenly the reason eating a big dinner makes you sleepy is because it's drugged. (Never mind that turkey doesn't have significantly more tryptophan than any other meat.)
The point is, as you note, there isn't a binary distinction. The difference is in dosage— is the amount of this thing that you actually encounter in your life enough to cause noticeable effects? If not, it may as well be inert. And nutmeg is a good example: the one chemical that the article does provide dosing on, and it turns out that it's basically impossible to get an actual psychoactive effect from it. I wonder what information about the actual concentrations of these "psychoactive chemicals" would reveal?