Obsessed: America's Food Addiction--And My Own by Mika Brzezinski Page B

mass-manufactured foods that are quick and easy to prepare. Most people aren’t giving much thought to what’s packed into them, but Powell certainly is. “Packaged food is high in salt, high in sugar, high in fat—all of those basic, primordial food preferences that people have. Seeking out salt, fat, and sugar ensured survival in previous eras, and we still have that same tendency.” The more we consume highly processed foods, she says, “the more our preferences have been directed that way, and we’ve lost the appreciation for fresh and whole food. The only thing that resonates with people is flavor and the intensity of flavor.”
    Along with passing up healthier foods for convenience, we have changed some of our basic customs. We no longer expect to eat three meals a day, sitting at a table with our families. In a family dinner setting, people can be more mindful of what they are eating and how much they are consuming. When meals are more “grab and go,” we end up doing a lot more grazing and snacking.
    “We don’t take time to eat,” said Lisa Powell. “We stuff in a sandwich at our desk and think we had lunch. We’ve lost that connection; we’ve just lost contact with the whole experience of eating. As a result, I think we’re not satisfied, so we’re looking for more and more and more and more.”
    We’ve just lost contact with the whole experience of eating. As a result, I think we’re not satisfied, so we’re looking for more and more and more and more.— Lisa Powell
    Then there’s the fact that social mores in America encourage eating just about everywhere. “If you go to Japan, it’s sort of socially prohibited to eat on the street,” says Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, a former White House advisor on health and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Zeke is also a Morning Joe regular. “People just don’t do it. It’s very different in America.”
    Price also plays a role. The fact is that eating nutritious food is more expensive than the alternative. “Compared to things like fresh fruits and vegetables, processed foods have a decreased price per calorie, and the economists will tell you that has a role,” Emanuel acknowledges.
    On top of that, our lives no longer require much physical activity. The kind of hard labor we used to do has been largely replaced by machines. We no longer walk to work; we drive. We have to deliberately seek opportunities to burn off calories because they are no longer built into everyday life, as they were for earlier generations. Put that together with today’s food environment and we begin to understand why we’ve gotten fat.
    “Everything about modern living that makes it modern is obesigenic,” says Katz. “The problem is a flood of highly processed, hyperpalatable, energy-dense, nutrient-diluted, glow-in-the-dark, bet-you-can’t-eat-just-one kind of foods” coupled with “wave after wave of technological advances giving us devices to do all the things muscles used to do.”
    The problem is a flood of highly processed, hyperpalatable, energy-dense, nutrient-diluted, glow-in-the-dark, bet-you-can’t-eat-just-one kind of foods.
    — David Katz
    That pretty much sums up why the American obesity crisis started about forty years ago. David Kirchhoff of Weight Watchers calls it “a perfect storm of overeating and under-exercising.”

    If my theory that some of us are addicted to unhealthy foods is confirmed by science, we’ll be able to understand a lot more about why we eat when we don’t want to. Ashley Gearhardt, PhD, a faculty member in the Department of Clinical Psychology at the University of Michigan, is a research pioneer in that area. When, as a graduate student at Yale University, she first began examining the possibility that food could be addictive, the very idea was mocked. Now, people are looking a lot more closely at the science that could explain food addiction, and her work is