The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite »

DAVID A. KESSLER, MD, served as commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration under presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He is a pediatrician and has been the dean of the medical schools at Yale and the University of California, San Francisco. A graduate of Amherst College, the University of Chicago Law School, and Harvard Medical School, Dr. Kessler is the father of two and lives with his wife in California.

Most of us know what it feels like to fall under the spell of food—when one slice of pizza turns into half a pie, or a handful of chips leads to an empty bag. But it’s harder to understand why we can't seem to stop eating—even when we know better. When we want so badly to say "no," why do we continue to reach for food?

Dr. David Kessler, the dynamic former FDA commissioner who reinvented the food label and tackled the tobacco industry, now reveals how the food industry has hijacked the brains of millions of Americans. The result? America’s number-one public health issue. Dr. Kessler cracks the code of overeating by explaining how our bodies and minds are changed when we consume foods that contain sugar, fat, 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. The End of Overeating explains for the first time why it is exceptionally difficult to resist certain foods and why it’s so easy to overindulge.

Dr. Kessler met with top scientists, physicians, and food industry insiders. The End of Overeating uncovers the shocking facts about how we lost control over our eating habits—and how we can get it back. Dr. Kessler presents groundbreaking research, along with what is sure to be a controversial view inside the industry that continues to feed a nation of overeaters—from popular brand manufacturers to advertisers, chain restaurants, and fast food franchises.

For the millions of people struggling with weight as well as for those of us who simply don't understand why we can't seem to stop eating our favorite foods, Dr. Kessler’s cutting-edge investigation offers new insights and helpful tools to help us find a solution.

There has never been a more thorough, compelling, or in-depth analysis of why we eat the way we do.

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. (May)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Foreword xi

Introduction: You Are the Target xv

Part 1 Sugar, Fat, Salt

1 Something Changed … America Gained Weight 3

2 Overriding the Wisdom of the Body 7

3 Sugar, Fat, and Salt Make Us Eat More Sugar, Fat, and Salt 12

4 The Business of Food: Creating Highly Rewarding Stimuli 18

5 Pushing Up Our Settling Points 22

6 Sugar, Fat, and Salt Are Reinforcing 29

7 Amping Up the Neurons 35

8 We Are Wired to Focus Attention on the Most Salient Stimuli 41

9 Rewarding Foods Become Hot Stimuli 46

10 Cues Activate Brain Circuits That Guide Behavior 50

11 Emotions Make Food Memorable 55

12 Rewarding Foods Rewire the Brain 58

13 Eating Behavior Becomes a Habit 61

Part 2 The Food Industry

14 A Visit to Chili's 67

15 Cinnabon: A Lesson in Irresistibility 74

16 That's Entertainment 78

17 The Era of the Monster Thickburger 83

18 No Satisfaction 94

19 Giving Them What They Like 97

20 What Consumers Don't Know 101

21 The Ladder of Irresistibility 104

22 The World's Cuisine Becomes Americanized 111

23 Nothing Is Real 115

24 Optimize It! 120

25 The Science of Selling 125

26 Purple Cows 132

Part 3 Conditioned Hypereating Emerges

27 Overeating Becomes More Dangerous 137

28 What Weight-Loss Drugs Can Teach Us 142

29 Why We Don't Just Say No 145

30 How We Become Trapped 154

31 Conditioned Hypereating Emerges 157

32 Tracing the Roots of Conditioned Hypereating 163

33 Nature or Nurture? 166

34 Warning Signs in Children 169

35 The Culture of Overeating 173

Part 4 The Theory of Treatment

36 Invitations to the Brain 181

37 Reversing the Habit 184

38 Rules of Disengagement 190

39 Emotional Learning 196

Part 5 Food Rehab

40 The Treatment Framework 205

41 Planned Eating 209

42 Letting Go of the Past 217

43 Eating Is Personal 226

44 Avoiding Traps: On Obsession and Relapse 231

45 Making the Critical Perceptual Shift 234

Part 6 The End of Overeating

46 "Our Success Is the Problem" 239

47 Industry Cracks the Code 242

48 Fighting Back 245

A Final Word 250

Q&A with Dr. Kessler 253

Endnotes 257

List Of Author Interviews 311

Acknowledgments 319

Index 323

About The Author 330