Book: THE END OF OVEREATING: TAKING CONTROL OF THE INSATIABLE AMERICAN APPETITE ~ David Kessler
Fat, salt, sugar.
In layers.
And more layers.
More layers than any one human should be eating in a sitting.
That’s the crux of the problem with the American diet of the past thirty years. This book is alternately fascinating and repulsive. If you aren’t already turned off by those “casual dining experience” restaurants (e.g. Chili’s, Cheesecake Factory, etc.) you will be by the end of this book. I avoid those type of restaurants, only dining at them in dire circumstances. I like my food to be cooked, not merely assembled from a bunch of boxes and bags delivered by Sysco in a freezer truck that morning.
One of the more nauseating passages of this book notes that people actually are chewing their food less than in the past: “According to Gail Civille [founder of a company that provides sensory consulting services], in the past Americans typically chewed a mouthful of food as many as twenty-five times before it was ready to be swallowed; now the average American chews only ten times”. This is because the uber-processed foods found in these chain restaurants have been tenderized, flavorized, and chemically treated so they require less chewing and literally slide easily down the throat:
John Haywood, a prominent restaurant concept designer, agreed. Processing, he said, creates a sort of “adult baby food”. By “processing” he means removing the elements in whole food - like fiber and gristle - that are harder to chew and swallow. What results is food that doesn’t require much effort to eat. “It goes down very easy; you don’t even think much about eating it,” said Haywood.
Ewww. Just, ewww. Just as Fast Food Nation did years before, THE END OF OVEREATING has me examining what’s going into my body as fuel, and how much.
Sure, I like my fat, salt, and sugar, but prefer them in their purest form, not hydrogenated, refined, and bulked up with additional chemicals. While the whole, organic, and local food movements can seem too damn smug at times, maybe they’re smug because they’re on to something smart.
