In New and Creepy Food Information you Probably Didn't Want to Know....

Dr. Kessler (you may recognize his name as the former FDA chief who had the cajones necessary to take on big tobacco) was inspired enough by his failure to NOT eat chocolate chip cookies on impulse enough to write a book about it: "The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite".  In his book, Dr. Kessler examines the reasons for our own impulse eating.

According to the NYT review of the book, Dr. Kessler believes: 

"by combining fats, sugar and salt in innumerable ways, food makers have essentially tapped into the brain’s reward system, creating a feedback loop that stimulates our desire to eat and leaves us wanting more and more even when we’re full."

The idea isn't that the food giants are smart enough to understand the neuro-chemistry behind the magical mixtures of ingredients, but that they know how to maximize eating pleasure with minimal chewing. Huh? Are we now reduced to the cows of yesteryear happily grazing? (Yes, I realize they chewed longer, but I feel as if we are being manipulated too much.) How disgusting is that? I thought it was bad when large tobacco manipulated the nicotine levels to ensure addiction, but it seems to be happening again, only in an area that affects the entire population: our food!

Is this the real reason that obesity rates have been climbing? Not because we the American population are getting dumber, but instead because the corporations which rule the food industry are getting that much more insidious about their techniques to trick us into thinking we are getting well-fed. In the past, Americans just had to contend with blatant advertising and now we have to deal with the effects of food manipulation and even more advertising. 

In his book, Dr. Kessler offers some advice for those struggling with food addictions. One piece of advice that struck me in particular was his idea of giving ourselves negative associations with things like candy and chain-restaurant food, much the same way many people kicked their cigarette habits by giving cigarettes associations. Perhaps a scale would work well for this? This is something that is good in theory, but way more difficult in practice. As I type, I am thinking I need a blogging-break and that there is a nice convenience store that just might have those little bites of satisfaction that I need......

Perhaps a Snickers tax is the way to go. Or banning the sale of Snickers to minors. Or one step further, closing down every restaurant serving crappy specially-manipulated food......what's needed for sure is for Americans to start recognizing that the monolithic food industry does not have their best interests at heart and that it is time to start recognizing how food interacts with our bodies.