Présentation de l'éditeur
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.
Extrait
CHAPTER 1
Something Changed... America Gained Weight
For thousands of years human body weight stayed remarkably stable. Throughout adulthood we basically consumed no more than the food we needed to burn. People who were overweight stood apart from the general population. Millions of calories passed through our bodies, yet with rare exceptions our weight neither rose nor fell by any significant amount. A perfect biological system seemed to be at work.
Then, in the 1980s, something changed.
Katherine Flegal was one of the first to recognize the trend, but like many good researchers faced with an unexpected finding, she thought her numbers must be wrong. A senior research scientist at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Flegal had been studying data from an enormous federal government survey of the health and nutritional status of American households. Her figures indicated that the number of people who were overweight had spiked dramatically.
Researchers had never seen such extreme numbers. In earlier decades, American adults typically gained a couple of £ds between the ages of twenty and forty and then lost a couple of £ds in their sixties and seventies.
The shift that riveted Katherine Flegal's attention came from government survey data collected from 1988 to 1991, which revealed that fully one- third of the population aged twenty to seventy-four weighed too much. In fewer than a dozen years, 8 percent more Americans--about 20 million people, roughly the population of New York State--had joined the ranks of the overweight.
Her training and professional experience had taught Flegal to be cautious. In a complex and ambitious survey, errors can creep in at many points, and data often show anomalies that disappear with further scrutiny. She knew her information had to be accurate before she sounded an alarm.
"We checked it to a fare-thee-well," she said, describing her research team's review of regional analyses, time trends, and quality- control techniques. Nothing seemed out of place. The evidence of an abrupt i
