Fruit as Methadone

Throughout Jacob's long battle with food addiction, he maintained one deeply held belief: If he stopped eating refined and processed food, his cravings (i.e. the hungry goat in his head) would disappear forever.

This seemed logical. After all, his goat wasn’t pushing him to binge on apples. It was refined, fatty, salty, and sweetened foods that it wanted. The addictive behaviour was around specific foods, not food in general, so he figured that if he quit the problematic varieties and persevered through The Goat’s tantrums, it would forget about its favourite foods and stop trying to make him eat them.

That’s what happened with cigarettes. Jacob’s goat loved to light up, which meant Jacob smoked for fifteen years. He didn’t really like the habit himself, but The Goat was quite attached to it. When Jacob finally resolved to quit, it took several failed attempts and a hefty amount of willpower to get there as his goat responded to the decision with a prolonged campaign of whinging and temper tantrums.

Jacob had to endure several painful weeks, but his goat gradually forgot about cigarettes and eventually stopped suggesting them to him. (Goats have very short memories.) After a few years without them, The Goat was so unaccustomed to the taste that when Jacob decided to have one as a rare treat, it obstinately refused to let him finish the whole thing.

Jacob imagined it would be the same way with processed food. For example, if he could fully abstain from chocolate for six months, he figured The Goat would forget about it and even lose the taste for it. If they indulged again after that, he hoped The Goat would find it unbearably bitter or sweet. The trouble was, The Goat knew exactly what Jacob was trying to do and, as it loved eating chocolate much more than it loved smoking, it worked a hell of a lot harder to ensure that Jacob was never long without it.*

He could resist for a few days. Sometimes The Goat would even encourage him. It would let Jacob walk past all sorts of delicious food options without making too much of a fuss. It would even throw in a bit of encouragement, so that Jacob would start to feel quite good about himself. It let him feel like he had the whole healthy eating thing sorted. Like they had agreed to a truce.

Then it would make a small suggestion.

“You’ve done so well this week,” it would say.

“I have, yeah,” Jacob would agree (delighted that someone had noticed).

“I think you’ve lost weight.”

“Can you tell? It’s only been four days, but I do feel a little lighter.”

“Oh, sure. I can see you have. You’re doing great. Hey, we’re about to pass the café with those nice choc-chip cookies we like. You should get one.”

“Ah, I don’t know… I’m doing pretty well right now.”

“That’s why you should have one. As a reward. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. I mean this is easy, isn’t it? Go on, you deserve it. You shouldn’t have to deprive yourself all the time. Having the occasional cookie is perfectly fine, and you’re only going to have the one.”

“Well…”

“Mmmm… cookies, cookies, cookies.”

“Okay then. Just one.”

It only took a small amount of junk food to re-energise The Goat. Then it would ask for another treat. And another. The food requests would quickly escalate, and Jacob would feel his control slipping. Any remaining willpower soon crumbled and he would find himself being led around cafés, convenience stores, fast food restaurants, and supermarkets by his goat’s overpowering drive to consume food.

Jacob was sure that the only way to break the binging cycle was to get off junk food completely. Unfortunately, The Goat was extremely convincing, and Jacob lacked self-discipline. He figured he had just enough resilience to battle through his goat’s attachment to smoking, but the food war was one he would never win.

Then he realised that dealing with a food addiction is not like dealing with a cigarette addiction at all.

He didn’t need to smoke, which meant that if he just abstained long enough, his goat would stop pestering him about it. But he did need to eat, and this made a food addiction much more complicated. His goat was never going to stop suggesting food as its whole raison-d’être was to ensure that he wouldn’t forget to eat every day and accidentally die of starvation.

While a food addict might feel like their goat is loudly and constantly telling them to eat, the unaddicted are not completely free of a goat, either. Their goat might just prompt them around mealtimes to think, I’m feeling a bit peckish—thus ensuring they remember to eat. The non-addicted goat might even encourage their human to have a piece of birthday cake occasionally, even if they’re not hungry, but they’ll follow it up with the recommendation of a very light supper. A non-food-obsessed goat will likely be resting most of the time, but they’re tasked with keeping their person alive, so they never completely go away.

Once Jacob figured that out, he realised that he was going to have to learn to manage his goat around food—not try to make it disappear forever. This was not an easy task. His goat had been well and truly wired to continuously eat, and Jacob was never far from food The Goat loved.

A very small number of food addicts may be able to abstain their whole lives, but the majority need to figure out a way to live with the constant ups and downs of eating foods that set off their goats. They need to find a way to have a piece of cake at a birthday party or go out for dinner with friends and not have that one event turn into a three-week junk food bender.

To survive this overabundant food environment, food addicts need a type of methadone. Something they can take daily (i.e. whenever they need it), that will pacify their goat without reinforcing its bad behaviour. For example, whenever they just want to grab a coffee but their goat insists they buy one of everything in the cake display; or whenever it screams at them to cut madly across two lanes and veer into the drive-thru that it has just realised is up ahead; or whenever it obstinately refuses to let them get any work done until they have consumed every last cracker, crisp and cookie that they can locate in the house.

Trying to ignore or say no to a demanding goat every time it pops up with a suggestion is near on impossible. They are too creative, too persistent, and more persuasive than their human hosts. Jacob no longer binges, but his goat still likes to pop up and offer food suggestions, especially when Jacob is having a bad day. Rather than constantly try to fight it, he started offering it something they could both agree on.

Well, The Goat didn’t agree at first, but Jacob persisted, and it came around.

Fruit, it turns out, is the perfect option. It is sweet (goats love sweet), it comes in many flavours (goats love variety), it is readily available (goats love buying things), it can be carried around everywhere (goats often appear without warning), and it is filling (goats like to eat as much as possible). Most importantly, it is not going to energise the goat further.

The Goat's preferred foods (ice cream, chocolate, potato chips, etc.) increase its energy, enabling it to become more forceful in its demands. It used to get Jacob to eat so much that he would be sick, yet it would still wake up the next day and want to do it again. When Jacob taught it to overeat fruit instead, his goat stopped waking up hungry.

The Goat wasn’t pleased about this compromise at first, but Jacob set himself a rule to eat fruit with every meal, even when he was binging. The Goat was still getting what it wanted, so it let Jacob have his fruit too and, over time, The Goat came to quite like it. Now that is mostly what it asks for. It asks for quite a lot of it, to be honest, but Jacob is fine with that.

The key, he figured out, was to treat it like a methadone program. A little fix that The Goat knows it can have any time it wants. He carries it everywhere, never restricts how much he can eat, and makes a point of never worrying about whether he is eating too much. Now he generally eats five to six pieces per day, but for several years, he ate double that. It may sound like a lot, but when trying to re-train a binging goat, eating a lot is essential. Goats insist on it. And, despite the volume, Jacob has never felt stuffed, bloated, or lethargic after eating it. In fact, once he started eating a lot of fruit every day, he felt a whole lot better.

He also started saving money. Fruit’s not cheap, but it is a hell of a lot cheaper than the mound of packaged food he used to eat every day.

It's not perfect. The Goat would still often prefer to eat something else, and sometimes Jacob goes along with it.** Some days they are both happy to have a processed treat but, as he knows this will fuel his goat and make the rest of the day harder, he tries to confine treats to special occasions. Fruit is about managing the everyday routine. It is about reducing how much energy his goat has and getting it to quieten down so that, most days, for most of the time, Jacob can just focus on all the non-food-related things he wants to get done.

This strategy takes time and practice. In the beginning, The Goat didn't want to eat fruit at all. Jacob would just try to wedge a little of it in amongst the junk food, so his goat would develop a taste for it. The Goat did develop a taste for it, but it was gradual. It also took some time for Jacob to stop himself from trying to restrict fruit or feel bad about adding it on top of everything else he was eating.

After a while, he started to notice that fruit was satisfying The Goat and it wasn’t requesting as much food overall, but it took long-term daily fruit consumption for his goat to start requesting it instead of junk food. Goats take time to adjust to changes, so easing fruit into the regular routine is the best strategy. It is the least likely to cause a goat to panic and start viewing fruit markets as conflict zones.

Going to the supermarket is a lot easier now. The Goat still offers suggestions while Jacob is getting all the items on his shopping list, but the last stop is always the fruit section and The Goat knows it will be able to get anything it wants there, so it mostly just focuses on that. (And to avoid any leaving-the-supermarket-without-junk-food panic, Jacob always insists on eating a piece as they’re walking home.)   

If thy food is thy medicine, for food addicts, it must also be added that thy fruit is thy methadone. It is really the only food that will satiate the demands of a goat for sweetness, flavour, and volume, while not driving it to ask for more and more food. A goat will never make their food-addicted human eat apples until they vomit, but they will happily do that with pizza, ice cream and packets of cookies. Like methadone for opium users, fruit won't eliminate the cravings completely, but it will reduce them so substantially that they can mostly just be ignored.

Fruit will also divert most of the goat’s attention away from more problematic foods, which makes life infinitely easier. (Nothing is more delightful for a food addict then getting to a point where all their goat wants to over-purchase are peaches.)

By slowly transferring a goat’s focus over to fruit, the constant food suggestions will start to quieten down and the food addict will find they have much more control over all their other daily food decisions. In fact, they’ll spend most of their time not thinking about food at all.

Published 10th August 2025

* Actually, it didn’t need to work that hard. Chocolate is cheaper, tastier and far more ubiquitous than cigarettes, so The Goat had plenty of opportunities to recommend it anytime Jacob left the house.

** Jacob also recommends using fruit as a chaser when a goat does have a processed treat, as this seems to distract them. Eating an apple while driving home from a birthday lunch should help a food addict get to their destination without having to detour via a bakery and two drive-thrus.