Book #2: The End of Overeating

Title: The End of Overeating
Author: David Kessler

I love seven-layer bars. Even thinking about them right now makes my stomach start to rumble. There's something about the combination of the chocolate, the salty nuts, the coconut and the caramelized butterscotch and sweetened condensed milk that makes them completely irresistible. I used to make them every so often, but I realized that when I do that, I can not stop myself from eating them. No one else in the family likes them, but I'd often eat an entire 9x13" pan in two days, three days tops. So I don't make them anymore, but when I see them for sale at a bakery, I'll buy myself a square.

This "not being able to stop" phenomenon is what David Kessler talks about in The End of Overeating. He calls it conditioned hypereating, and studies show that a majority of obese people struggle with it, along with significant portions of overweight and normal-weight Americans. According to Kessler, the American food industry has snowballed the problem by creating foods that are hyperpalatable (with multiple layers of fat, sugar and salt) and by making eating out a rewarding occurrence that takes place with increasing regularity in our society.

Kessler, a pediatrician and professor of medicine at UCSF (and the man behind the new food labels), spends the first half of the book talking about why we crave sugar, fat and salt, and how those cravings get harder to turn away as they become habits. He also spends a significant amount of time talking about how the food industry creates foods that are addictive and bad for us (he uses examples from Cinnabon, Outback Steakhouse, Panera Bread, and I'm pretty sure I will never be able to eat at a Chili's again). But the last third of the book is about what we can do to recircuit the now-instinctive behaviors and conquer conditioned hypereating. It's a really interesting read, although I think it's probably just a first step for people for whom conditioned hyereating is really a problem. I think back to when I was trying to lose weight about three years ago, and lots of what he says in the book (like setting rules-- I had a rule that I would never eat dessert before lunch, which has worked really well for me) reflects the things that I used back then. Ironically, I've thought more about the foods that call out to me over the last two days (and craved them more strongly) than I usually do, but I can see that Kessler's book helps all of us understand why we as a society struggle with obesity and how to start fixing the problem on an individual level.