The secret mix of industries that is holding us hostage
food
Best-selling U.S. complaint: the food so addictive to their products. A blend of sugar, salt and fat, almost impossible to resist. But there is a way out of TARA PARKER-POPE
by repubblica.it
NEW YORK - In As Head of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. David A. Kessler has held his post under two presidents, the Congress and fought many battles against the tobacco multinationals. But he found to be totally helpless against a simple chocolate biscuit. Kessler has brought on himself a little experiment: to test his will power, has bought two pretty tasty cookies with chocolate chips, determined not to eat them. At his home he found himself staring at them very often. Once out without touching them felt winner. But just saw some cookies in the window of a similar bar has stopped and has now swallowed one.
"Because those cookies have such power over me?" Kessler wondered. "It is the chocolate to make them irresistible? Cookie O thought that I blend in my head?" I spent seven years trying to find an answer to this question. " The response that Dr. Kessler has finally found is contained in a newly published book which is titled The End of overeating: taking control of the insatiable American appetite ("The End of excessive food consumption: how to control the insatiable appetite American).
When directed, the Food and Drug Administration, Kessler has modernized and made more efficient agency, has been lobbying for more timely approval of some drugs, he oversaw the creation of standard labels to be affixed to foods with nutritional data of the product. It is perhaps more famous for doing surveys on smoking, for trying to apply stricter standards to the tobacco industry, and it is always he who accused the cigarette manufacturers had manipulated the content of nicotine dependence in smokers because it would create.
Now, in his book, Kessler reports that he found some similarities between the strategies adopted by the tobacco industry and the food business, which manages to put food on the market capable of establishing a strong desire in the brain and almost irresistible consume more. If it comes to simple stimulation brain, Kessler noted, the individual ingredients themselves are not particularly powerful, but a combination of fat, sugar and salt in many ways, food manufacturers have in a sense that brain flaw in the system of self-gratification, creating a vicious circle of feedback that constantly stimulates our desire to eat, leaving us eager to continue doing so even when we are full.
Dr. Kessler is not sure that food producers fully understand the principles of neuroscience have unleashed forces that, but some food companies are well aware of human behavior, preferences, tastes and desires of the palate. In his book, he describes as food service and food kneading the basic ingredients to achieve what he called "the highest point of ecstasy." There are chain restaurants like Chili's, is one of the examples in this book, offering "highly palatable food, which needs to be chewed a little and goes down very easily." Kessler also reported the case of Snickers candy bars, made with "extraordinary technique" when you chew, in fact, the sugar melts, the fat melts, the caramel wraps the peanuts so that the confluence of aromas bring more taste to prove an almost ecstatic.
foods rich in sugar and fat came only in the relatively Recent food landscape: Dr. Kessler noted, however, that today's food is more than just a simple combination of ingredients. There are in fact extremely complex creations, stuffed layer after layer of mouth-watering flavors that give life to the brain in a multisensory experience. "My goal - Kessler writes - is to explain to people what happens in the brain when eating a particular food, and explain to them how their brains are literally a prisoner of that food."
Kessler's book, a bestseller in the ranking of the New York Times, also contains the candid admission by the author and do not exert self-control of eating in excess. "Probably I'd be interested in trying to understand why we do not resist when faced with certain foods if I myself do not fight constantly against it: I lost pounds and I shot them several times and I have clothes of all sizes, now. "
One of the main messages is that Kessler launches overeating is a symptom of lack of willpower, as a challenge made even more difficult to biological stimulation abundant food from the environment around us. And as many of us are repugnant to smoke, Kessler believes that it is possible to arrive at similar perceptions with regard to doses too abundant food and too much work.
(c.2009, The New York Times, translation Anna Bissanti)
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