David A Kessler:
The End of OvereatingThe first half of this book is mouth-wateringly good. He vividly describes "highly-palatable" foods, and all that goes in to making them irresistible. Foods are reduced to a proper combination of salt, sugar and fat, blended with the proper flavors to entice us to want more. I found myself craving all sorts of food as I read this account.
If anybody is reading this book as a "diet book", it would probably be best to s kip to the end. Otherwise, you'll probably find yourself simply wanting to eat more and more.
The second part of the book details his theory of "conditioned overeat". People become conditioned to notice food cues and eat, even when they they don't have the needs. Food is used as a "reward" for the brain.
Then the book goes on to describe methods for setting plans to reduce the "addiction" to food. This part seems fairly sound, and offers methods for coping with the stimuli that the food industry sets up for us. After all, their goal is for everyone to get as much of the highly-palatable, high margin food as possible.
While the first half of the book describing the food industry and desirability is vividly written, the remainder of the book becomes more dryly scientific. I'd prefer that the author eliminates the 'self-help' section, and simply focus on the food industry and his theory.
Some of his "fixes" at the end would be problematic. He would like to see calorie counts posted on all menus. This may be trivial for chains with fixed portion sizes. However for the "mom and pop" chains this will be a significant expense that will add very little to the dining experience. The irony of calorie labeling today is that the food that is most adequately labeled (such as processed snack foods) tends to be the most fattening, while whole fruits and vegetables tend to go unlabeled. It's hard to see how labeling would make much of a difference.
It seemed like an interesting book. However, "Your Food is Fooling You" is not much more than a grade school diet book. Today's food has a bunch of chemicals in it to make us like it, eat more and get fat. That's about all there is to it. After spending an hour, I was halfway through and decided to give up. It was small, yet didn't say much. He wrote a longer book that is more worth reading.
