The End of Overeating
Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite
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3.4 • 8 Ratings
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The former commissioner of the FDA exposes how the food industry manufactured a nationwide health crisis and offers research-based solutions for taking back control of our diets.
“Fascinating.”—The New York Times
“Groundbreaking.”—USA Today
“Disturbing, thought-provoking, and important.”—Anthony Bourdain
Most of us know what it feels like to fall under the spell of food, but it’s harder to understand why we can’t seem to stop eating—even when we want to. So why do we continue to reach for food?
Dr. David A. Kessler, the dynamic and controversial former FDA commissioner known for his crusade against the tobacco industry, is taking on another business that’s making America sick: the food industry. Nearly 75 percent of American adults are clinically overweight or obese, triple the amount from only sixty years ago. But why? In The End of Overeating, Dr. Kessler shows us how our brain chemistry has been hijacked by the foods we most love to eat: those containing stimulating combinations of fat, sugar, and salt. Food manufacturers create products by manipulating these ingredients to stimulate our appetites, setting in motion a cycle of desire and consumption that ends with a nation of overeaters.
Drawing from the latest brain science as well as interviews with top physicians and food industry insiders, The End of Overeating exposes the food industry’s aggressive marketing tactics and reveals shocking facts about how we lost control over food—and what we can do to get it back.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Conditioned hypereating is a biological challenge, not a character flaw," says Kessler, former FDA commissioner under presidents Bush and Clinton). Here Kessler (A Question of Intent) describes how, since the 1980s, the food industry, in collusion with the advertising industry, and lifestyle changes have short-circuited the body's self-regulating mechanisms, leaving many at the mercy of reward-driven eating. Through the evidence of research, personal stories (including candid accounts of his own struggles) and examinations of specific foods produced by giant food corporations and restaurant chains, Kessler explains how the desire to eat as distinct from eating itself is stimulated in the brain by an almost infinite variety of diabolical combinations of salt, fat and sugar. Although not everyone succumbs, more people of all ages are being set up for a lifetime of food obsession due to the ever-present availability of foods laden with salt, fat and sugar. A gentle though urgent plea for reform, Kessler's book provides a simple "food rehab" program to fight back against the industry's relentless quest for profits while an entire country of people gain weight and get sick. According to Kessler, persistence is all that is needed to make the perceptual shifts and find new sources of rewards to regain control.
Customer Reviews
Formatting??
I was enthusiastically trying to read this book, but the missing apostrophes, parentheses, and other formatting have made it nearly impossible. Can you please release an update to fix this issue? I doubt the author wrote this book without the use of apostrophes.