Adult baby food

Dr. David Kessler has written a new book called "The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite." He was recently interviewed by Katharine Mieszkowski of Salon.com. You can also listen to their discussion here. I was intrigued by Kessler's notion that much of the food to which people become addicted is "adult baby food":

We're eating, in essence, adult baby food. Twenty years ago the average chews per bite was about 20, now it's two or three. The food goes down in a whoosh and it's very stimulating. It's layered and loaded with fat, sugar and salt. It's as if you have a roller coaster going on in your mouth. You get stimulated, it disappears instantly and you reach for more.

But it's not just the fat or the sugar. We dress up food really well here in the United States:

We make food into entertainment. We make it into a food carnival. Go into a modern American restaurant: the colors, the TVs, the monitors, the music. You do it with your friends. We've taken sugar and added all these multiple levels of stimuli. What do we end up with? Probably one of the great public health crises of our day.

Go visit Salon for the entire article. Lots of worthy observations. For instance, he discusses why people get fat (it's not because fat people enjoy eating more than skinny people). Also, there is no body "set point" to protect you from gaining weight. Kessler offers lots of ideas for not allowing your brain to get hijacked by high calorie food. On a related note, I've had to constantly monitor my own eating and exercise to keep myself where I need to be (I'm now 5' 11" and 170), and I use a variety of techniques I described here, especially the need to avoid refined carbohydrates and to constantly aim for whole grains and lots of vegetables and whole fruits (not juice).

Continue ReadingAdult baby food

Ballpark food lighting up our Pleistocene taste buds.

What is it about ballpark food that makes it so delicious? I think that these new truth-in-marketing signs at the ballpark pretty well sum it up. Photo (etc) by Erich Vieth These stadium food vendors truly excel in offering superstimuli for our not-ready-for-modern-times stomachs and eyes. What should we do about this mismatch between our pleistocene cravings and our modern abilities to pump out this life-shortening quality-of-life-diminishing fare? That's the question raised by Dr. David Kessler, former Commissioner of the FDA:

Fifty years ago, the tobacco industry, confronted with the evidence that smoking causes cancer, decided to deny the science and deceive the American public. Now, we know that highly palatable foods—sugar, fat, salt—are highly reinforcing and can activate the reward center of the brain. For many people, that activation is sustained when they're cued. They have such a hard time controlling their eating because they're constantly being bombarded—their brain is constantly being activated.

For decades the food industry was able to argue, "We're just giving consumers what they want." Now we know that giving them highly salient stimuli is activating their brains. The question becomes what do they do now?

When I say "superstimulus, I mean it. I can't believe how many obese people I recently saw at the stadium. Half of them wore Albert Pujols jerseys, but none of them looked like Albert Pujols. Now, while we're still discussing stadium food, here's an untouched photo clearly demonstrating that the world is almost out of fresh water. After all, there's no other explanation for why anyone would pay twice as much for 20 ounces of drinking water than for a gallon of refined gasoline. image by Erich Vieth I can just imagine the conversation: Child: Daddy, can I have a few sips of water? Father: Billy, how many times have I told you that we can't afford to drink water!

Continue ReadingBallpark food lighting up our Pleistocene taste buds.

The American war against telephone poles

In a short article entitled, “The War on Telephone Poles,” the February 2009 edition of Harper's Magazine includes a fascinating excerpt from an essay by Eula Biss, which was originally titled "Time and Distance Overcome” as it appeared in the Spring issue of Iowa Review. Biss's article is a terrific example of the human tendency to resist long-range change that would substantially improve the community as a whole. As she clearly documents in her essay, many people ferociously opposed the erection of telephone poles back in the 1880’s. Whatever their stated reasons (aesthetics and defense of private property were often argued), the real reasons for resisting telephone poles were timeless: fear of change combined with a warped sense of the importance the individual in relation to his or her community. The Biss essay reminds us that Americans have long been quite capable of harpooning critical community-building endeavors in the name of individual freedom. We don’t fight telephone poles anymore, but this destructive tendency is one we still see in modern day America. Only a small bit of Biss's essay is available online. The basic idea presented by her essay is that in the 1880s, numerous people (including elected officials and newspapers) ferociously opposed the erection of telephone poles. They argued that telephone poles were ugly. They characterized telephones to be considered playthings of the rich.

Continue ReadingThe American war against telephone poles

What it’s like to not shop for a year.

Judith Levine and her significant other decided to not shop for a year.   She wrote about her trials and tribulations in her book, Not buying It: My Year Without Shopping. She also wrote about it in Washington Post in an article titled, "Don't Buy It." Here's an excerpt: People can…

Continue ReadingWhat it’s like to not shop for a year.