Statistics released in August by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that on average American adults are not any taller than they were 25 years ago. They are, however, 15 pounds heavier. While the average American male still stands 5'9", he presently weighs 196 pounds. While the average female still falls just shy of 5'4", she now weighs 169 pounds.

Chances are you've helped create this increase. And chances are, you didn't want to. So increase your chances of bucking the trend by considering a bit - just a bit - of philosophy and how your view of food affects what types and how much of it you eat.Alan Watts, the Brit best known for helping Western man understand Far East philosophy, claimed that we possess two forms of consciousness: spotlight consciousness and floodlight consciousness.You use stoplight consciousness when you are fully focused on the task at hand, such as threading a needle, balancing your checkbook, or putting a golf ball. But you can accomplish certain tasks without solely focusing on them.That's when floodlight consciousness comes into play. It allows you to drive a car while fully absorbed in an audiobook, an argument, or a pleasant - or not-so-pleasant - daydream. Floodlight consciousness allows you to obey stoplights, avoid other cars on the road, and arrive at your destination - even though you really don't remember much afterwards.Using floodlight consciousness aids you immensely throughout the day, but not at mealtimes. Now it creates problems. When you're not focused fully on the act of eating, you tend to eat more, enjoy it less, and make poorer food choices.You've read similar sentiments in this column before. In short, if you want to feel and perform at your best, every food consumed needs to be a conscious decision. And just as "there's no crying in baseball," there's no autopilot when eating - not healthy eating anyway.Just about every single food decision you make must be based upon what your body needs rather than what your taste buds want - or you increase the odds of becoming the average American: a lot wider, yet no taller.A few years ago, I shared how a poor food choice before a workout can really hinder it.I once swapped my normal concoction of complex carbs and protein I eat three hours before an ambitious ride for a just-out-of-the-oven soft pretzel, and 15 minutes into the ride my legs seemed to lose power. By the two-hour mark, I was so wiped out that riding in a straight line required spotlight rather than floodlight focus. And the worst part was that my body needed an extra day to recover from a ride that wasn't especially intense.Years before that, I devoted a column to why I wouldn't eat the traditional piece of shoo-fly pie served after a 100 kilometer ride conducted by a bicycle club. While many riders enjoy junk food after long or demanding rides because a body in caloric debt tends not to store fat, junk food isn't the best energy source for next-day recovery.While my eating habits may seem severe, you need to eat this way if you believe as I do: that there is no such thing as neutral eating. Everything you eat either helps or hurts your overall health.And there's a fair amount of research that suggests to a large degree that's true.Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Attention Disorder wasn't considered a medical condition in the United States until the 1960s. By the 1990s, reported cases increased significantly, and the increase has continued. From 2003 to 2011, for instance, the number of diagnosed cases in the U.S. increased by 55 percent.Now research published this summer in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry has linked a child's likelihood of developing conduct disorder, a pattern of behavior usually found in those with ADHD that continually violates the rights of others and/or accepted social rules, to a high-fat, high-sugar diet consumed by the child's mother during pregnancy. Now I could pontificate on how the unhealthy diet probably causes DNA methylation of the insulin-like growth factor 2 (better known as IGF2) gene to alter its function, but now's not the time.Now is the time to realize the far-ranging and long-term effects of diet.Similarly, a study also published this summer by the American Journal of Public Health found that fruit and vegetable consumption increases more than physical health. Eating significant amounts of both increase your degree of satisfaction and happiness. In fact, researchers at the University of Warwick in Australia followed the eating habits of over 12,000 people and concluded that the increase in overall satisfaction for people who go from eating no fruits and vegetables to eating eight servings a day is the equivalent of going from out of work to gainful employment.Add this benefit to the well-known ones, such as increased fruit, and vegetable consumption makes it more likely to maintain a healthy weight or lose unwanted weight, and less likely to develop heart disease and certain types of cancer. So, it makes perfect sense to turn off the floodlight and turn on the spotlight at mealtimes.