[blindweightwatcher] Excerpt From 'The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite'

From: "Jan Bailey" <jb021951@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <blindweightwatcher@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2009 06:43:07 -0500
Excerpt From 'The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American 
Appetite' 

By: 
David A. Kessler, M.D. | 
Source: AARP Bulletin Today | May 25, 2009

Why We Eat Too Much. Photo by Alamy 

Photo by Alamy 

"Higher sugar, fat, and salt make you want to eat more," a high-level food 
industry executive told me. I had already read this in the scientific literature
and heard it in conversations with neuroscientists and psychologists. Now an 
insider was saying the same thing.

My source was a leading food consultant, a Henry Ford of mass-produced food who 
had agreed to part the curtain for me, at least a bit, to reveal how his
industry operates. To protect his business, he did not want to be identified.

But he was remarkably candid, explaining that the food industry creates dishes 
to hit what he called the "three points of the compass." Sugar, fat and salt
make a food compelling, said the consultant. They make it indulgent. They make 
it high in hedonic value, which gives us pleasure.

"Do you design food specifically to be highly hedonic?" I asked.

"Oh, absolutely," he replied without a moment's hesitation. "We try to bring as 
much of that into the equation as possible."

During the past two decades there has been an explosion in our ability to 
access and afford highly palatable foods. Restaurants-where Americans spend 50
percent of today's food dollar-sit at the epicenter of this explosion.

Countless new foods have been introduced in restaurants, and most of them hit 
the three points of the compass. Sugar, fat and salt are either loaded onto
a core ingredient (such as meat, vegetable, potato or bread), layered on top of 
it or both. Deep-fried tortilla chips are an example of loading-the fat
is contained in the chip itself. When a potato is smothered in cheese, sour 
cream and sauce, that's layering.

I asked the food consultant to describe the ingredients in some foods commonly 
found in popular restaurants today.

"Buffalo Blasts: chicken breast, cheese and our spicy buffalo sauce, all 
stuffed in a spiced wrapper and fried until crisp. Served with celery sticks and
blue cheese dressing."

For a moment the food consultant just laughed. "What can I say? That's fat, 
sugar and salt." Chicken breast allows us to suspend our guilt because it 
suggests
a low-fat dish, and the celery sticks also hint at something healthy. But the 
cheese layer is at least 50 percent fat and carries a load of salt, and the
buffalo sauce adds a layer of sugar on salt. That dough wrapper-a simple 
carbohydrate-is fried and so absorbent that he called it a "fat bomb."

Just as chicken becomes the carrier for fat in the Buffalo Blasts, pizza crust 
can be a carrier for sugar and fat. Caesar salads are built as an excuse
to carry fat and salt. We double-fry french fries, first at the manufacturing 
plant and then in the restaurant. Our hamburgers are layered with bacon and
cheese. We add cheese to spinach, batter our fish before frying it, and slather 
our Mexican food with cheese. As we do, each one of these foods "becomes
more compelling, more hedonic," said the consultant.

As our conversation wound down, he walked me to the door of his office and 
paused, as if choosing his words carefully. Then, with the certainty of an 
insider,
he observed that the food industry is "the manipulator of the consumers' minds 
and desires."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reprinted from The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American 
Appetite, © 2009 by David A. Kessler, M.D. Permission granted by Rodale,
Inc.

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[blindweightwatcher] Excerpt From 'The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite'

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