To change an obsession for doing something into an obsession for not doing it is to change nothing at all that is worth changing. The essential first step in the understanding and treatment of eating disorders is to recognise that the problem lies primarily in the individual sufferer, not solely in the food itself. The problem is essentially the perception defect and mood disorder. This is exactly the same problem as in patients suffering from alcoholism, drug addiction, or any other addictive or compulsive behaviour. The problem goes with them, wherever they go and whatever they do. These people have what I believe is a neurotransmission defect in the mood centres of their brains. There may be a chemical defect in the way one nerve cell communicates with another. This leads to a mood disorder and the sufferers discover the mood-altering properties of alcohol, nicotine, cannabis or cocaine or other substances; or they may discover gambling or exercise or shopping and spending or other mood-altering behaviours.

Sufferers from eating disorders discover the mood-altering properties of sugar and white (refined) flour. The process of refinement takes away the fibre that provides the bulk of the vegetable and produces a mood-altering drug. Patients with neurotransmission disease discover for themselves that potatoes and rhubarb do not "work" in changing the mood whereas alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, cannabis, sugar and white flour all do. People who do not have neurotransmission defects drink alcohol for the taste, they smoke cigarettes - limited numbers in order to look "grown-up" - and they use cannabis and other recreational drugs in order to be daring or to feel part of the group. People who have neurotransmission disease use these substances in order to survive, in order to relieve their deep inner emptiness and suicidal depression. This is precisely why it is so difficult for them to give up these substances - because they dread going back to the absolute abyss that they were in before.