Book Review: The End of Overeating, by David A. Kessler

We don’t write much at DrYoho.com about diet and exercise: this is a whole specialty field. But obviously I’m concerned about health; we do a lot of liposuction. I thought our patients from Los Angeles to Fresno would be interested in the following summary.

The most important point of this book is that the eating-out industry, which now takes 50 per cent of the dollars spent on food in the USA, is all about making money and has little interest in your health, perhaps an obvious point—but look below. This has been a progressively worse problem over the past 4 decades. The trend toward (massive) US citizen weight gain was confirmed in the scientific journals about 1970. “Food scientists” working for the restaurant industry are interested in getting you to spend as much as possible, so they try to make the experience as exotic and sensual as possible. While this may seem like it’s all in good fun, it turns out to be the cause of many of our health problems. All successful chain restaurants, with the fast food restaurants leading the pack, have designed the material you are eating to be the most palatable treat they can. And in doing this, they emphasize consumption of what some of the scientists call “the three points of the compass”: fat, sugar, and salt. When they can combine these in ways that are appealing, consumption—and profits—go up. While it’s widely known that the “chicken” in a Macdonald’s chicken product is part beef, part sugar, part other things, and has the nutritional composition more like beef than chicken, it’s not widely known that most of the sit-down chains manufacture their foods also. The emphasis of course is maximum consumption. There are other factors which are used: texture and color considerations and food additives come to mind, but the three unhealthy additives above have come to represent such a major portion of the diet that we all are gaining weight. These designers even make the food softer in some cases in order to make more of it go down faster.

So I don’t trust Appleby’s, for example, any more than MacDonald’s or Jack in the Box now. They are not generally serving real components of what’s grown on the land or taken from the animals, just manufactured mixtures that might look like it’s natural but which are often unhealthy.

One of the sad but I suppose funny insights was thinking about one of our local franchises which sell deep fried chicken and waffles, together! It’s all there: fat, salt and sugar (the syrup of course). And the people going in and out all day are universally obese. The rumor is that the combination is an aphrodisiac… But we don’t have to explain the appeal after reading Dr. Kessler’s book.

The solution to the obesity problem isn’t easy. We have to eat what we cook ourselves, and not give in to the temptation to eat out often. Japanese restaurant cuisine seems healthy to me (what can they do to these ingredients if you stay away from California rolls, mayonnaise, and deep-fried selections?). Portion control seems to be almost more important than ingredients for weight control as shown in some recent studies. This may explain why the French seem to stay thin and healthy despite a high fat composition in their diet and cigarette use. There are various behavior solutions to help your attitude toward food that may help, which Dr. Kessler describes.

I highly recommend this book, available at Costco, where I stumbled across it this last Saturday.