The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite

by David A. Kessler

Book Overview

Uncover the truth behind our food addiction - and learn how to break the cycle Many of us find ourselves powerless in front of a bag of crisps, a packet of biscuits, the last slice of pizza. Why is it... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1605297852
• ISBN13: 9781605297859
• Release Date: April 2009
• Publisher: Rodale Books
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Everything that has made the food industry successful is the problem that has resulted in obesity an

Having battled weight all my adult life, these are some of the important points I took away from David Kessler's book: The food industry is the manipulator of consumers' minds and desires. As a result, restaurant food is loaded with fat, salt, and sugar. In a cyclical process, eating highly palatable foods with just the right amounts of sugar, fat and salt activates the opioid circuits in the brain and increases consumption of highly palatable food. Engaging opioid mechanisms interferes with "taste-specific satiety." You don't grow tired of the taste of a food, you just keep eating it. Humans prefer an exaggerated stimulus. Hyperpalatable foods with very energy-dense sugar and fat are the culinary equivalent of entertainment spectacles like Disneyland or Las Vegas. The amount of sugar in food today goes beyond the level we could have experienced naturally, and that means we desire it more. If we were eating these types of foods once in awhile (like we visit Disneyland once in awhile) it wouldn't be such a problem. The difficulty is that we do it so often. People have been conditioned to eat more of certain types of foods during certain times of day. Culturally, we are now expected to eat during times of the day when we normally would not have eaten. During my years teaching at one school site, we had recess aides. As a result, each morning at 9:30, we teachers would dismiss our students for recess and then gather in the lunchroom. There was the expectation that there would be a snack in that lunchroom every day: chips and guacamole, a cake (teachers were encouraged to bring a cake to share on their birthdays) or something else. We would sit and dish about our kids and munch away on the snacks at the table. I gained 15 pounds that first year of teaching, and thereafter continued a pattern that resulted in more weight gain over the next 8 years that I worked at that school. When I transferred to a new school, there were no morning recess aides. So, there was no routine to have food in the lounge as had been the case at the old school. The result: skinnier teachers with more appropriate morning eating habits. After awhile, I gave up that "morning snack" entirely. But it had become a conditioned habit. Positive associations become ingrained in us to motivate our behavior. We associate certain foods with pleasurable times in our lives. The reverse is most certainly true as well: We can associate foods with an unpleasurable experience as well. My sister will not eat scalloped potatoes and ham to this day because she vomited that particular dinner up one evening at the beginning of a bout with stomach flu. Foods high in sugar, fat and salt are altering the biological circuitry of our brains. People cannot control their responses to highly palatable foods because their brains have been changed by the foods they eat. When it comes to food, we are following an eating script that has been written into the circuits of our brains. For example, "C

Knowing WHY is half the battle

Many of us have difficulty controlling our weight. Usually we have assumed that it was due either to something we couldn't control, such as our metabolism, or a total lack of self-control. This book shows how it is really a middle-ground between the two extremes. First, the author effectively dismisses the myth of the "metabolism" or "big boned" excuses that many of us use to excuse our over-eating. He shows that it is really a matter of calorie intake that is the root of our weight problems. Second, he shows how the food industry has engineered food that is overloaded with excessive calories and is designed to promote overeating in their insatiable drive for excessive profits. Through the use of multiple layers of salt, fat and sugar, they create foods designed to trigger the pleasure centers of our brains, releasing opioids that cause us to lose control and overeat. Finally, he shows how we can harness control over our eating by avoiding certain foods and by devising a planned response to food advertising and the presence of enticing foods, similar to the methodology employed by alcoholics to control their drinking. While we are not to blame for our susceptibility to the stimulus of enticing food and food advertising, we do have a choice as to how to react to the stimulus. This book has helped me gain some control over my eating habits and has caused me to view television advertisements for restaurants and foods in a new light. Even the ads for Nutrisystem are designed to stimulate overeating! Unlike alcohol and other drugs, we need food to survive, so we have to learn how to deal with these issues and consume the right foods in moderation, avoiding both the wrong foods and overeating. This book is a great help in that quest. Knowing WHY we do something is half the battle and helps us control our reactions to the stimuli. Ironically, this book made me think twice about my personal opposition to our nation's drug laws, both for legal (alcohol and tobacco) and illegal (marijuana, etc.) drugs. Seeing what a health problem has been created in this country by corporations engineering foods for maximum profits, I can only imagine the problems they would create if allowed to manufacture and sell drugs without any controls.

Superb Book On How and Why People Overeat As Well As How to Stop Overeating

This is a well-written, easily understandable, interesting book on the very serious subject of overeating. The book is broken into six parts with relatively small chapters ranging in size from approximately three pages to eleven pages in length with many in the four to seven page range. The first part, for example, has 13 chapters so there is much information but it is presented in a way which flows well together. When I got this book I was interested in the subject matter but I was worried that the book would be boring or so technical that I would lose interest. I read this book in two days and it has changed my approach to eating. Part One of the book, Sugar, Fat, Salt, talks about why people eat and overeat. It looks at the physical as well as psychological aspects of overeating. Part Two of the book (my favorite), The Food Industry, gives specific examples of how restaurants and the food industry contribute to the problem by creating food that people want to eat but is not healthy. For instance I never new that bread had so much salt because it takes away the bitter taste of the flour and brings up the flavor. The author also addresses how nutrition information on packaging is manipulated by the food industry. For instance if a food contains more sugar than any other ingredient it must go first on the list but if you use a number of sources of sugar like brown sugar, corn syrup and fructose each is listed individually and goes lower on the list. Part Three, Conditioned Hypereating Emerges, talks about how we get trapped into an overeating pattern. It references numerous studies and explores whether overeating is nature, nurture or both. Part Four, The Theory of Treatment, talks about theoretical ways people can break the overeating habit. Part Five, Food Rehab, offers practical ways individuals can stop overeating. The advice is great. Part Six, The End Of Overeating, talks about the challenges ahead to end overeating. While it will not be easy, each individual has the power to end his or her overeating despite roadblocks created by the food industry or our own physical or mental makeup. This is a great book that has started me thinking differently about food. It is well written and the best on the subject I have ever read.

A clincal account of the science behind overeating

I appreciated this book. I appreciated a health-related book discussing dieting that WAS NOT trying to sell you something. The research that went into this book is impressive and the results are fascinating. Turns out that along with our waistlines, processed food manipulation has been on the rise since the 1980's. Food producers of all types have been seeking ways to make us want their product more, and it is working. The pleasure-seeking part of your brain is hard to turn off once saturated with key combinations of ingredients, namely fat, sugar and salt. We are hard-wired to seek foods with these ingredients combined, and the public has been trained to respond. The result? Severe obesity and obesity-related health problems in the numbers we have never seen before. This book does a wonderful job educating the reader in what they are doing subconsciously. It gives power to those who walk around inhaling food and thinking, "why the hell am I doing this?!" Once armed with the knowledge, it is amazing how you walk through the grocery store and see the companies practicing what the book preaches. You begin to read labels in a new way and ask yourself questions like, "why would this product have so much sugar salt AND fat in it, it's just plain spaghetti sauce?!" If you are a chronic dieter, you stop looking at just fat grams and calories and start READING the whole label. The book is completely right about so many products; fat, salt and sugar are there in combinations to solely get you hooked to eat more of the product. This book is informative and well written; the style is very easy to read and understand without feeling talked down to. If you ever wondered why we are in the state we are in as a nation of consumers, you will enjoy the education you will get from this book.