David Kessler is a former US Food and Drug Administration commissioner who, according to the book flap, "reinvented the food label and tackled the tobacco industry." In this book, he turns his attention to obesity and the role the food industry plays in promoting overeating among Americans in particular, but with relevance to the wider international community.
His basic premise is that the seductive and addictive effects of too much sugar, salt and fat, along with unprecedented availability and corporate promotion, has seduced people into what he calls "hypereating."
Publisher: Rodale Press; hardcover; 320 pages.
Sugar, Fat, Salt
Decades ago, weight training was pretty much the preserve of bodybuilders, powerlifters and Olympic lifters. These days, weight training is a huge part of the general fitness and weight loss scene and industry.
Even so, you need to eat less as well as do weight training and cardio to optimize weight loss. This is where David Kessler's book has an important role to play. It analyzes the reasons for overeating and what we can do about it.
Part One discusses the role the key ingredients of sugar, fat and salt play in "amping up the neurons" -- a term that describes the seductive attraction and the stimulus of these foods on the way to chronic overeating.
Kessler describes how the brain focuses attention on the most salient stimuli, and how the combination of salt, sugar and fat, and the conditions under which we encounter foods with them, turn on powerful brain chemicals that compel us to eat, and eat plenty -- in fact, much more that we need. Dopamine, a primeval brain hormone, runs this reward system.
The Food Industry
In this section, Kessler gets stuck into the food industry and describes how the corporate food juggernaut essentially has very little choice other than to optimize their product sales with every trick in the book -- then to justify it by saying that they're only giving people what they want -- but obviously not what they need.
What's more disturbing is his description of how traditional ethnic cuisines have become Americanized with salt, sugar and fat.
Kessler:
"The chain's vegetable spring rolls have been Americanized. That's why we see sugar twice in the filling -- added to the vegetables and to the chicken base that seasons them."
He goes on to describe similar loadings with salt and fat.
Not only has ethnic eating been modified in the US, he says, but traditional American fast food has been exported to the world, perhaps initiating similar obesity epidemics in some countries.
Hypereating and Treatment
Parts Three and Four describe the evolution of hypereating, the scope of the problem, and what we can do about it including a theory of treatment.
Kessler describes four steps for conditioned habit reversal: awareness, competing behaviors, competing thoughts, and support.
This has elements of rational emotive therapy, a psychological technique many decades old and used in weight management for many years -- but it's still relevant.
Food Rehab and the End of Overeating
The last two sections delve further into reaching a solution to the conditioned responses that compel us to eat more than we need and the wrong kinds of food. He discusses relapses, how to get help, the role of exercise (briefly), and some standard tips for controlling overeating and the cues for it.
In Food Rehab, Kessler offers some practical solutions like creating structure around eating, choosing healthy foods that satisfy, and being mentally prepared to tackle food cravings.
In all, this is a great book for people working in the professional weight loss industry because it provides a cohesive scientific description of the biological and psychological framework of overeating. It's also easy to read and has some breezy anecdotes and personal stories.
As for solutions to the obesity epidemic and overeating, most of the approaches are not new although they are worth repeating.
The book should be read by every person who is struggling, or has struggled with weight loss and failed, because it provides explanation, inspiration and a path to success. However, many people know that the basic rules are to eat less and exercise more; the difficult part is getting the "mind games" right to enable these things to take place. This book will help.
