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Is Your Brain Hijacked by Uncontrollable Food Cravings?
July 6, 2009 | 1 Comment
Posted by: Kathleen Daniel
This is a book we’ve long been waiting for! Written by former FDA commissioner Dr. David Kessler, who is known for his early efforts in regulating tobacco and food labeling,The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite
zeros in on the way food manufacturers manipulate tastes in food to short-circuit the body’s self-regulating mechanisms and cause uncontrollable food cravings. Frankly acknowledging that he’s gained and lost his body weight several times over – and that he owns suits in every size – he set out to discover how chocolate chip cookies held such power over him. What he found led him to understand how food makers manipulate food in the same way that manufacturers engineer cigarettes – with great precision. Finding the “bliss point” at which we derive the greatest pleasure from food is the holy grail for food scientists, creating uncontrollable cravings to that food experience.
What surprised Kessler is that highly palatable foods hijack the brain by excessively activating its reward circuits. It’s not just conditioned behavior, but the learning and motivational circuits of the brain that are captured, making the anticipated reward of eating a food stronger than actually eating it. These “food products” are carefully designed to be highly stimulating – layered and loaded with fats, sugars and salt – so that people come back for more. Kessler calls these uncontrollable cravings ‘conditioned hypereating’. People who eat these processed foods never really feel satisfied – and they’re left always wanting more.
What’s sad is that kids who start out at an early age eating fat, sugar and salt all day lay down this addictive neuro-circuitry for life. These kids, like the rest of us, are programmed to never feeling that they’ve had enough. His main message is that overeating is not always, or necessarily due to an absence of willpower. If you eat these processed foods, it’s a biological challenge amplified by the over-stimulating nature of the foods you’re eating.
So the good news is that knowing why you have cravings is half the battle. Dr. Kessler suggests that once you understand the cues, once you understand how you’re being manipulated, and what’s happening, you can start asking questions –i.e., Is this real food? Do I really want this? – and to make different choices. His “food rehab” offers practical advice for using the science of overeating to think differently about food and take back control of your eating habits.
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1 Comment so far
I’m always leery of books about food written by men. Your last sentence is what makes me leery: “he offers practical advice…to THINK differently about food.” I think most women need more than to just “think” differently about food – we need to “feel” differently. It’s the emotional eating that tends to derail us