I admit it.  I’ve been a fan of David Kessler since his first year as FDA Commissioner. He not only streamlined approvals (without sacrificing safety), he required nutrition labelling of foods, and took on the cigarette (tobacco) lobby.  He graduated from Harvard Med and Chicago Law, ran a teaching hospital in Manhattan, was Dean of Yale Medical School, among many other things.  Just your normal underachieving academic.

He authored a book that hit the NY Times Best Seller list in 2009, The End of Overeating.  It’s goal was to make us (that’s you and me, kimosabe) aware of the salt, sugar, and fats in that stuff we call food that we eat.  His assertion is that these are arranged by the manufacturers to goad us into eating more, changing our brain circuitry to crave more and more of it.  (Don’t blame me, doc, it’s the food I eat that makes me fat…)

He understands that the food labs are arranged to determine what food attributes and mixtures will hit our pleasure centers, rendering us virtually powerless against the urges, to these fat/sugar/salt concoctions.  Not only flavors, but textures are employed to elicit these cerebral reactions.  Not only that, but these manufactured foods are often stripped of their vital nutrients.

And, now he’s translating that message for teenagers.  His newer book, Your Food is Fooling You, is aimed at curing these bad traits before they congeal into terrible habits that condemn us as obese adults.   He’s counting on the fact that, as kids, we turned their parents off from smoking, when we were little (and never took the habit up ourselves).   Now, he wants to replicate that concept for overeating.

Here are a few of the concepts that he stresses:

1.  Know what/when you are eating.   It is critical to understand how much fat, sugar, and salt is in that stuff we put into our mouths.  We also should eat smaller amounts, more frequently- every four hours or so, while awake.  And, nothing in between.
2. Reasonable portions.  It’s not just Bloomberg who knows we don’t need 64 ounces of pop.  That’s not satisfying our thirst- nor are triple-decker burgers solving our hunger problems.
3.  Get off your duff- instead of snacking.   As I’ve written before, exercise (running, biking) triggers the exact same locations within the brain as that chocolate-covered donut.  Yup, our activity will satisfy our brains as much as would that donut- and it’s so much better for us.

Stay tuned… My next post will describe how the food industry is making these choices more difficult!

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