It's not our fault we are becoming an obese nation. It's the magic ingredients of salt, fat and sugar that make us scream for more, writes FIONOLA MEREDITH
SALT, FAT and sugar – this unholy trinity – working on our brains like an irresistible drug is the real reason behind the western obesity epidemic, according to David Kessler, the former head of the US Food and Drug Administration.
He set out to write his book, The End of Overeating, because he was puzzled by his own fluctuating weight. He "owned suits in every size" and he saw wild food cravings in himself and in those around him.
Kessler observed that certain foods – such as pizza, biscuits, burgers – exert a “magical pull” on people, sending them into an almost trance-like, blissful state as they eat, and prompting them to go on eating well past the point they were actually hungry.
And it’s not just the overweight who fall for the seductive power of these foods, as Kessler points out, even people who are slim often feel embattled by their desperate drive for food. So why the loss of control? Why is it that we simply can’t say no?
“Sugar, fat and salt make a food compelling,” says Kessler. “They stimulate neurons, cells that trigger the brain’s reward system and release dopamine, a chemical that motivates our behaviour and makes us want to eat more.
“Combined in the right way, they make a product indulgent, high in hedonic value.”
Modern food manufacturers have become highly proficient in engineering hyper-palatable meals that hijack our brains, prompting us to gorge ourselves silly.
One of the ways they do this is by what Kessler calls “loading”, where sugar, fat and salt are loaded into a basic ingredient, layered on top of it, or both.
Take a bowl of deep-fried tortilla chips – you’ve got the fatty crisps themselves, then the whole thing is covered with cheese, sour cream and sauce, in exactly the right combination to light up our brain reward circuits and give us the hit we desire. And once the effect wears off, we’re primed to search it out again.
It’s not surprising that the fast food chains are the main peddlers of this magical combination of fat, salt and sugar.
Kessler says that Kentucky Fried Chicken’s popular popcorn chicken – small pieces of meat, a huge amount of fat pick-up on the fried coating, the impression of a big portion – is a prime example.
Burger King’s Whopper is another – “explosively rich in fat and sugar and salt” and that’s before the cheese and bacon is loaded on.
But these brain-changing foods aren’t limited to the fast food joint: they’re everywhere. Kessler points to Kettle chips made from sugary russet potatoes, they have a complex flavour and high levels of fat, which gives them their distinctive melt-in-the-mouth quality.
“Heightened complexity is the key to modern food design,” says Kessler. And we feel helpless in the face of the aroma, the taste, the texture, what Kessler calls “the rollercoaster in our mouths”.
Essentially, he says, “we have made food into entertainment”.
It’s not just the presence of fat, salt and sugar that gets us hooked. It’s about the easy availability of cheap snacks, so we can munch on a whim. It’s about memory, emotional appeal, the gloss of advertising – all these factors work together to keep us coming back for more.
“It’s a kind of automatic processing,” says Kessler, “once the brain gets aroused, it’s hard to turn it off. And, once you get into the ‘will I, won’t I?’ inner dialogue – well, that only increases the reward value. That’s how the brain gets captured.”
Equally disturbingly, Kessler charts the rise in pre-masticated processed foods that slip down our throats so sweetly and easily that they over-ride the body’s signals that tell us we’re full.
Essentially, we’re talking baby food for adults, stripped of the elements in whole food that make them harder to chew and swallow. Kessler calls these “foods that go whoosh”, like the Snickers bar: just the right amount of chewing melts the fat and sugar, and the caramel carries away the peanut pieces.
The trouble with the “whoosh” factor, says Kessler, is that “by stripping food of fibre, we also strip it of its capacity to satisfy. In making food disappear so swiftly, fat and sugar only leave us wanting more.”
Our collective addiction to milky coffee, whether in cappuccino or frappuccino form, comes from a similarly primal, infantilised place. In the book, one expert tells Kessler, “It’s about warm milk and a bottle . . . one of my colleagues said, if I could put a nipple on it, I’d be a multi-millionaire.”
It’s well known that the obesity epidemic is an advanced state in the US. But Kessler says that we’re catching up fast. “The obesity rate is 20 per cent in Ireland, compared with almost a third in the States. It’s a food carnival in the US, and the consequences for health are profound. It’s time to get the brakes on.”
The warning signs are there in our children: Kessler says that while an average American two year old eats more calories at lunch and less later, naturally balancing out her intake over the day, by the time the child is five, she’s likely to have lost that ability to compensate, already locked into the unhealthy neural circuitry that leads to obesity.
Kessler says that we need to take action, and quickly, if we’re not to find ourselves in a similarly dire, food-addicted situation. It’s a timely warning – last week, during a debate about obesity in the Dáil, FF TD and GP Dr Jimmy Devins claimed that Ireland already had the fattest children in Europe.
So what can we do? How can we maintain control of our appetites in the face of such carefully crafted temptation?
“You have an advantage here in Ireland,” says Kessler, “because you eat at home more, and you eat more locally grown food. Both those things are protective.”
Planning when and what you eat, keeping the structure in your eating day, is a large part of Kessler’s “food rehab” plan: “the idea is to inhibit mindless eating and eliminate your mental tug-of-war”. So rules can help: “if I say I’m just going to cut out crisps, as an absolute rule, then I don’t have to get into that debate with myself”.
And, simplest of all, Kessler advocates portion control, cutting back to half the meal you normally eat.
The challenge is to retrain your brain to see “a small plate of healthy foods that taste great” as just as tempting as a gigantic cheese-smothered burger. For food addicts, that will be a gargantuan challenge.
Seeking solace by overeating: page 8
“Our collective addiction to milky coffee, whether in cappuccino or frappuccino form, comes from a similarly primal, infantilised place. In the book, one expert tells Kessler, ‘It’s about warm milk and a bottle . . . one of my colleagues said, if I could put a nipple on it, I’d be a multi-millionaire’
