The Search for Reliability
A 29-Year Quest for Reliable Resolution of Chronic Illnesses
Dr. Ifland has been looking for a reliable way to help people resolve diet-related chronic illnesses since 1996. Here is the story of how a 29-year quest finally yielded online programs that reliably give relief from chronic illnesses for the long-term.
1996 Joan creates a handout of healthy foods for friends but no one can follow it. This shows that a information alone is not effective in helping people change eating routines. Information is not enough, nonetheless, health professionals are still relying on handouts today.
2000 Joan publishes her popular book Sugars and Flours: How they Make us Crazy, Sick and Fat. The book stays in the top 3% of Amazon books for over 10 years but does not spark a revolution in eating styles. A book was not enough. Nonetheless, hundreds of diet/health books continue to be published.
2001+ Joan teams up with PBS producer Patricia Gras to teach Americans about the harm of processed foods. This does not help but such programs are still being produced.
2007 Joan earns her PhD in the hope of reaching academics. To her astonishment, she discovers a vast body of obesity literature describing intense cravings for processed foods. Her dissertation validates alcoholism diagnostic criteria for overeating. Although the scientific basis for processed food addiction exists, it is hidden.
2009 Dr. Ifland publishes the first description of food addiction in the academic press. The article has been cited 486 times as of 2025. The scientific field of intense food cravings and overeating has swiftly grown but does not reach practitioners, human resource managers, nor the public. It did not create the reliable help that Joan was searching for.
2010 Dr. Ifland founds Victory Meals, a prepared meal company with the goal of showing people easily how much better they feel without processed foods. To her surprise, Dr. Ifland found that even highly successful people were released from cravings, brain fog, and fatigue when eating unprocessed food. Prepared meals are not the answer just as giving an alcoholic water is not enough to support control..
2014-2017 Dr. Ifland is approached by CRC Press to write the textbook for the food addiction field. Processed Food Addiction: Foundations, Assessment, and Recovery is published in 2018. It is 204,000 words supported by 2,000 studies. This is the foundational work that shows why weight-loss programs and medical approaches are inadequate to resolve diet-related disease for the long term.
2016 Dr. Ifland begins offering online support to overeaters. However, the initial offering of one phone call per day is not enough.
2018 The Addiction Reset Community (ARC) finally brings control over food to a beta test group of 30 individuals who had been bingeing uncontrollably. Access to four hours of live programming per day on Zoom proves to be enough to resolve diet-related diseases (www.foodaddictionreset.com). by 2024, the ARC has built to 15 hours per day of live programming on zoom.
2019 The American College of Nutrition promotes Dr. Ifland to Fellow in recognition of her work in resolution of diet-related diseases.
2020 Dr. Ifland releases the Food Addiction Recovery Advocate (FARA) Training (foodadddictionrecoveryadvocate.com) for both lay people and professionals.
2023 Dr. Ifland co-creates the Remission Optimistic Community (ROC) to support recovery from more serious illnesses. The ROC extends the effectiveness of the ARC by adding alternative modalities in an online group..
2023 Dr. Ifland co-created the Holistic Recovery Academy (https://www.foodaddictionreset.com/holistic-recovery-academy) to offer her latest breakthrough approaches to health restoration through its life-changing short courses.
2024. Dr. Ifland is awarded a patent for her method to resolve chronic-illnesses.
2025 Dr. Ifland launches the Real Workplace Wellness (RWW) consulting practice to support human resource managers in reducing healthcare costs.
Dr. Ifland has two article abstracts accepted by the Journal, Frontiers in Psychiatry. Topics include how eating disorders resemble processed food addiction as well as evidence for which specific foods are associated with intense cravings and diet-related illnesses.
