Why We Overeat and How to End it

by Larry Smith

As Chrissy Love said recently on the ZNS call-in show Immediate Response, "Chile I been on more diet than Oprah".

Her point was that diets don't work - at least not in the long-term. As we all know, it's hard to stick to any diet, and sooner or later we give up and rejoin the world of uncontrolled eating, usually gaining back the few pounds we lost plus a little more.

Most of us simply shrug our shoulders and move on. But a groundbreaking new book by the former head of the US Food and Drug Administration reveals that food is now a top public health issue, and he tries to explain how we can scientifically address our compulsive urge to overeat.

The unfortunate fact is, says Dr David Kessler in The End of Overeating, that we have all become addicts - hooked by overstimulated brain chemicals on huge portions of food layered and loaded with sugar, fat and salt, and offering little or no nutritional value.

Kessler, a Harvard-educated pediatrician, argues that until we fundamentally alter our eating behaviour, we will continue to waste money on ineffective weight-loss schemes while running the risk of all those deadly medical conditions that are caused by obesity - including diabetes, heart disease, stroke, liver disease, arthritis and some cancers.

Naturally, his book focuses on Americans and the American food industry in particular. But Bahamians are in the same overloaded boat, as Health Minister Dr Hubert Minnis has frequently pointed out. And since most of our prepared foods and chain restaurants are American, Kessler's facts about overeating are just as applicable here.

Kessler is perhaps best known for his efforts to investigate and regulate the tobacco industry, and his accusation that cigarette makers intentionally manipulated nicotine content to make their products more addictive. His new book compares the food industry to big tobacco, and shows how our responses to food need to change.

"The attitudes that created the social acceptability of smoking shifted, and many of us began to see smoking as deviant, even repulsive behaviour. A consensus emerged that the cigarette, and the industry that manufactured it, was abhorrent. We moved from glorification to demonisation."

So we need to change our thinking about big food in the same way. As Kessler says, "Its ubiquitous presence, large portion sizes, incessant marketing, and the cultural assumption that its acceptable to eat anywhere at any time (are you listening civil servants?) puts us at risk...And people need to hear repeatedly, from many sources, that selling, serving, and eating food layered and loaded with sugar, fat and salt has negative, unhealthy consequences."

The book begins with the observation that for thousands of years human body weight stayed remarkably stable, so that people who were overweight stood apart from the general population. A perfect biological system seemed to be at work, until something happened in the 1980s.

When researchers surveyed government health and nutrition data collected from 1988 to 1991 it became apparent that fully one-third of the entire American adult population was overweight - an abrupt increase. The landmark study showing that the rate of obesity in America had exploded was published in the July 1994 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Kessler's book is the result of the years of thinking and study he went through to try to make sense of those results. As he points out, food had become more readily available in the 1970s and 80s, along with larger portion sizes, more chain restaurants, more neighborhood food outlets, and a culture that promoted more out-of-home eating. But there had to be something more driving us to overeat.

His conclusion - in a nutshell - is that sugar, fat and salt cause us to eat more sugar fat and salt. It's all about "palatability", a term scientists use to refer to food that has the capacity to stimulate the appetite and drive us to eat more. "It's the stimulation, rather than general hunger," he says, "that makes us put food into our mouths long after our caloric needs are satisfied."

Decades of research into human taste, food preferences and dietary choices, have confirmed that what stimulates us most is a combination of sugar and fat. Mix the same amount of sugar into low fat and high fat products and people always choose the higher-fat mixtures - something that restaurants like the Cheesecake Factory were quick to figure out.

Kessler cites one experiment with two strains of rats. One was bred to overfeed when a high-calorie diet was available, producing an obesity-prone rat. The other strain did not ordinarily overfeed - an obesity-resistant rat. After a period of eating extra calories, the obesity-resistant group cut back their food intake much faster. But when both groups were offered highly palatable foods rich in sugar and fat, all the animals ate without restraint.

Another experiment let one group of animals eat freely while restricting the diet of another group. Both groups then headed towards a chocolate-flavoured cereal high in sugar and fat at almost the same speed. The absence of hunger made no difference to the appeal of the reward.

But it is Kessler's insights into the food industry that are the most interesting part of the book. He reports inside information from a variety of food consultants who confirmed that the industry creates dishes specifically to hit the three points of the compass - sugar, fat and salt.

"Chicken tenders," he writes, "are so loaded with batter and fat that my source jokes that they're a UFO - an unidentified fried object. Salt and sugar are loaded into the fat. The White Chocolate Mocha Frappuccino served at Starbucks is coffee diluted with a mix of sugar, fat and salt. Blooming Onions - the trademark Outback Steakhouse dish - provide plenty of surface area to absorb fat. Fried in batter and topped with sauce their flavour comes from salt on sugar on fat."

Eating high-sugar, high-fat foods produces opioids in our brains that help calm us down and make us feel better - at least in the short term. That's why infants cry less when given sugar water and animals feel less pain when administered opioid-like drugs. "Eating highly palatable food activates the opioid circuits...The more rewarding the food, the greater the attention we direct toward it and the more vigorously we pursue it."

In addition to that, the conditions under which we encounter foods switch on powerful brain chemicals that compel us to eat. We learn to want a food or some other substance we once liked. Putting all this together gives the following picture, he says: "A cue triggers a dopamine-fueled urge...dopamine leads us to food...eating food leads to opioid release...and the production of both dopamine and opioids stimulates further eating...The more rewarding the food, the stronger the learning experience that creates the automatic behaviour."

And the goal of food design is to make products as rewarding as possible. For example, Kessler describes the boneless chicken wings at Chili's Restaurant. The meat is injected with a solution of water, soy protein, salt and sodium phosphate. At the manufacturing plant the chicken is battered, breaded, and pre-dusted to create a salty coating that becomes crispy when fried in fat at the restaurant.

The coating is some 40 per cent fat and represents up to half of the volume of nuggets that end up on your plate. Added to this is a sweet and salty sauce and a mayonnaise-based dressing - it's hyper-palatable food that requires little chewing and goes down easily. The fact is that chemical-based processing has created a sort of adult baby food.

According to US government figures we are eating more of everything these days. Per capita consumption of fats and oils jumped 63 per cent over the past 30-odd years. Use of sugars and sweeteners was up 19 per cent. We ate 43 per cent more grain and 7 per cent more meat, eggs, and nuts over the same period. We are also eating 24 per cent more vegetables - but most of those are deep-fried potatoes, otherwise known as french fries.

Then there are the portion sizes. Food designers say that if you make plates bigger and fill them more, everyone makes more money. Supersize options and all-you-can-eat specials give consumer access to a bottomless well of food for a fractional increase in cost. It's cheap and its always available.

"Based on these findings," Kessler says, "an argument can be made that conditioned overeating is a syndrome, or a condition characterised by a cluster of symptoms...These patterns almost certainly contribute significantly to the exploding obesity epidemic...A conducive environment is necessary to trigger hypereating. That's exactly what we have today."

The bad news is that there's no quick fix - it's simply impossible to avoid the temptation of highly palatable foods all the time in today's world. The good news is that we can begin to train ourselves to alter the reactions that are generated by stimulation. And awareness of the problem is the first step along this road, Kessler says.

"Once I thought a big plate of food was what I wanted and needed to feel better. Now I see that plate for what it is - layers of fat on sugar on fat that will never provide lasting satisfaction and only keep me coming back for more. I have changed the reward value of the stimulus."

Over to you Chrissy.

Comments

[Christopher Hartley]

Your article has moved me to write.

My brother and his wife are raw foodists, not only do they eat nothing with a face, but they do not cook their food at all.

I am not so radical as my brother, and believe more in the moderation approach. But in debating with my brother I have learned much about the food industry.

You are probably right to stick to the subject that most people understand, such as sugar, fat, and salt and drive it home. But if truth be known the problems are much worse than that. Like the cigarette industry, components which cause addiction such as MSG are a huge part of the food industry.

They also cover it up by mislabeling and using loopholes like using another name for things - such as flavour enhancers.

Labeling is very flawed in the labeling of sugar, for example. The labels are meant to list the ingredients with the most amounts first. If you look closely you will see that the industry puts sugar in the product in different ways so it will not appear at the top of the list (eg corn syrup).

MSG has a devastating effect on those who are more susceptible to its brain-altering effects. MSG mimicks natural substances that are normally used by the brain. To me, any unnatural substance that fools the body to absorb it, no matter what the effect, cannot be good.

Then there is the use of cheep oils and the industry’s lack of consideration for the health of the world. The industry's propaganda is that cheap oils are healthier. I understand that when coconut oil was in short supply during the Second World War. It became necessary to find alternatives like corn oil and cotton seed oil. After the war the industry decided it was cheaper to use these alternatives and waged a campaign to vilify coconut oil.

These are just a couple examples that are only the tip of the iceberg. If the truth were known, I think the scandal would be as big as the tobacco industry. The problem is we can't quit eating, and are at the mercy of the industry.

Making us addicted by using MSG as well as sugar, fat, salt, and flavoring increases sales. Making a long shelf life at the cost of low nutritional value makes for more profit. Making food with cheap oils and cheap ingredients increases profit. Brain washing us with propaganda to make us buy the crap increases profit.

Can you imagine if the law required a disclaimer for fast food as well as chips and candy stating that these products may cause a long list of aliments ending in death?

The medical industry and drug companies are benefiting with huge profits by now treating us for the ailments generated by the food industry to the point of bankrupting the modern world.

On a positive not the pendulum may slowly swing and the industry and public be swayed to make corrections.

Maybe then we can start to fix the health and state of the planet. My mother told me many times: “Do not try to save the world, but save yourself, and then help those around you and work outward."

[Piter Hale]

I recall a Calvin & Hobbes one-liner solution on problem obesity – “eat less, exercise more”.

How about an even simpler one: “eat plain”. This way you can still stuff yourself, but the calorie count is lower. And don’t worry about exercise if you’re too heavy to enjoy it – you can’t lose weight without taking in fewer calories. After all, the skinnybones extracted alive from the Port au Prince rubble the other day didn’t exactly exercise to lose weight!

Eating plain: e.g. plain microwaved whole potato instead of potato chips or French fries. And minimizing the meat intake.
Trick is to lose the sweet/savory tooth. Most of us wouldn’t be able to come up with enough saliva to get a plain potato down. Once you’ve lost the sweet/savory tooth however, you’ll find that sucker’ll go down tout suite.

I happened accidentally upon how to lose the sweet tooth – in my student days at a part time job, the queue for the sugar didn’t leave enough time to get the tea down before the break ended, so I just skipped the sugar.

If you find yourself facing something with sugar/salt in it, e.g. cheap peanut butter, mix it up with something bitter e.g. celery or spinach.

Important thing is you can quickly get to the comfortable “force of habit is stronger than will power” zone. Nobody can stick to a diet, because that requires willpower. However, anybody can form habits. This means you no longer have to subject yourself to those diet/binge oscillations because you’ve conditioned your palate to consider junk food as too sweet/salty.

To reinforce the health habit, throw in some techniques such as brushing teeth after the meal, and then not snacking between meals.

Trouble with eating plain food is that it might be a hassle finding it when you go out. I’ll let you figure out the solution for that.
Also lots of calories in beer/alcohol, another socializing challenge. My solution is the same for both, but perhaps you can work out another. After all, most of us live to socialize.

Remember: “eat plain”, and “force of habit is stronger than will power”.

[Leandra Esfakis]

Studies on the "Mediterreanean" diet show it to be one of the healthiest diets, compared to other western diets.
It has a higher portion of legumes, fish, fruit and vegetables. From my observation of the Cretan diet, most of the food consumed, is fresh -not frozen, and without preservatives.
One study shows that Cretans enjoy better cardiac health and longevity than the other nations in the study.