The end of overeating

Hijacked: How Your Brain Is Fooled by Food
by David A. Kessler, MD


Sugar, fat, and salt. These are the ingredients that activate the brain's reward center. It makes you want to eat more. Food companies know this well. That's why they load up processed foods with lots of sugar, fat, and salt. Then they add chemical flavors to make foods hard to resist. It's not just food companies either. Restaurants turn food into entertainment, with supersized portions and fun-centered advertising. When food is fun, you don't realize how much you are eating. No wonder obesity is such a problem. 

Help is at hand with David Kessler's book. He explains what overeating is (when you feel you have to eat, even if you're not hungry), how the food industry targets you (with sugar, fat, and salt), and how you can stop overeating. The key, he says, is to retrain your brain to form new eating habits. And you can do it without dieting if you keep in mind how a food makes you feel after eating it.

Kessler knows that it won't be easy. It takes a lot of practice to break habits and retrain a brain. So he keeps his food rules simple. Combined with your own rules and a lot of persistence, overeating can be conquered.

A fast, easy read for teens and adults.