Quiting Smoking with Your Eating Habits

I recently came across some evidence which indicates that if someone is trying to quit smoking, focusing on their diet can help. By reducing your consumption of meat, and increasing your consumption of vegetables, along with drinking less coffee and more milk, your urge to smoke can dwindle.

According to a study conducted by psychologist, Joseph McClernon, at Duke University, it has been shown that a diet consisting of dairy foods, fruits and vegetables, actually give cigarettes a repulsive taste. Eating meat, and drinking coffee or alcoholic beverages, actually enhances the taste of a cigarette, encouraging the habit.

While the core of cigarette addiction is definitely due to nicotine, we are beginning to discover that sensory effects such as smell, taste, as well as the visual and habitual aspects of smoking, play a very significant role in accentuating that nicotine addiction. The way in which a cigarette tastes plays the largest role in accentuating a nicotine addiction.

In order to study the theory of taste being linked to smoking habits, McClernon asked a total of 209 smokers to eat certain foods over a period of time, and list the foods that either enhanced or worsened their smoking experience. The people involved in this study habitually smoked an average of a pack of cigarettes per day, and have each been smoking for an average of twenty years. Almost 70% of the smokers involved in this study, found that meat, caffeinated and alcoholic beverages, made their cigarettes taste noticeably better. Almost half (45%) of these habitual smokers, confirmed that vegetables, dairy foods and non-caffeinated beverages, made their cigarettes taste considerably worse.

As for those who smoked menthol-cigarettes, the types of foods that they ate had little effect on the taste of their cigarettes. This indicates that menthol smokers have a much harder time quitting smoking, simply by changing their diet, than smokers who smoke regular cigarettes do. Menthol reduces the fluctuations in cigarette taste. One way to remedy this problem is by simply switching from menthol cigarettes, to regular cigarettes, and then following through with habitually snacking on fruits and vegetables. Not only will the snacking help a smoker to quit because of taste quality, but it will also get the person to do something with his or her hands and mouth, other than smoking.

The reason or reasons behind why certain foods cause cigarettes to taste better or worse is not yet known, and research is currently being done in order to discover this. It has also been found that drinking large amounts of water can help to worsen the taste of cigarettes as well. Once the link between food and cigarette taste is discovered, this knowledge can be used to develop new formal treatments, aimed at the purpose of quiting smoking.