Reason Writers Around Town: Jacob Sullum on Dietary Correctness in The Wall Street Journal

August 24, 2009

James McWilliams and David Kessler both want to complicate your diet, writes Senior Editor Jacob Sullum in The Wall Street Journal. But while McWilliams, in Just Food, is trying to save the planet,  Kessler, in The End of Overeating, is trying to save you, which is considerably more annoying.

Whole book review here.

Comments

|8.24.09 @ 11:23AM|#

He relies on unnamed industry ­"insiders" to prove that ­comestible pushers such as Cinnabon and the Cheesecake Factory deliberately make their food delicious

A similar report was released in Britain about their supermarkets. The satirical Daily Mash responded correctly.

'A spokesman for Asda said: "The National Consumer Council seems to have confused us with something that is not a business."'

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|8.24.09 @ 11:39AM|#

If those damn Cinnabons weren't so delicious, Americans wouldn't be fat. How dare they make a good product?!?!?

People seriously need to stop worrying so much about other peoples choices. There is a big difference between helping those less fortunate, and telling them how to live their life. Also, there is a big difference between giving asked for advice, and advice unsolicited. Bastards.

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Fist of Etiquette|8.24.09 @ 11:42AM|#

I'm currently writing a book advocating government-mandated stomach staples for everyone. The follow-up is going to push for appetite suppressors in the water supplies.

(Dedication: For the children.)

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|8.24.09 @ 12:05PM|#

The calls for self-denial are more flagrant in "The End of Overeating," which urges readers to give up pasta, French fries, bacon cheeseburgers, cookies, candy and other ­"hyperpalatable" foods-­basically, it seems, because David Kessler has trouble controlling his own passion for such tasty treats. Using himself and a few similarly voracious acquaintances as models, Mr. Kessler argues that "conditioned hypereating" is largely responsible for the nation's "obesity epidemic." He exhorts its victims to resist the machinations of the food industry- "the manipulator of the ­consumers' minds and desires," as one "high-level" executive in the business describes it.

I'm 5'10" and weigh 145 lbs. I eat all of that tasty shit. Bacaon cheeseburgers, candy bars, cake and pies, pasta galore (my spaghetti sauce uses pork sausage). As near as I can figger, if it weren't for "conditioned hypereating" I'd have died of starvation decades ago.

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|8.24.09 @ 12:17PM|#

I'm 5'10" and weigh 145 lbs.

Fattie.

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|8.24.09 @ 12:20PM|#

He relies on unnamed industry ­"insiders" to prove that ­comestible pushers such as Cinnabon and the Cheesecake Factory deliberately make their food delicious-or, as he breathlessly puts it, they ­"design food specifically to be highly hedonic."

Holy shit. So that is why they made that double quarter pounder with extra cheeze and bacon so tasty.... to get me to eat it. Now I get it. And now that I thought about... I am getting hungry.... Where can I get me one?

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|8.24.09 @ 12:23PM|#

"design food specifically to be highly hedonic."

Could, like, God make a cheesecake so delicious even He couldn't resist eating it?

My hands are huge.

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Xeones|8.24.09 @ 12:26PM|#

"They call 'em fingers, but i never seen 'em fing... Oh, there they go."

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jtuf|8.24.09 @ 12:41PM|#

McWilliams, in Just Food, is trying to save the planet, Kessler, in The End of Overeating, is trying to save you, which is considerably more annoying.

I have two older siblings. By the Zero Population Growth philosophy, I should have never been born. McWilliams's goal and Kessler's goal are mutually exclusive in my case.

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|8.24.09 @ 12:46PM|#

Jacob: You ought to review Gary Taubes book, "Good Calories, Bad Calories." It's got some eye-opening facts about the current obesity epidemic and how the US government helped create it.

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|8.24.09 @ 1:23PM|#

"Palatable foods arouse our appetite," says one. "They act as an ­incentive to eat." The author's explanation of why this is so-that tasty food affects ­neurotransmitter levels and ­activates "the body's reward system"-is not especially ­enlightening, since the same could be said of pretty much everything that humans enjoy.

Silly me, I've been telling my patients they eat because they are HUNGRY and tend to crave certain foods for reasons such as upbringing, personal preference, satiety and the sense of contentment it brings, and genetic background. Craving of certain foods can also be indicative of malnourishment of certain key nutrients as well or indicative of certain disease processes.


"People get fat," he also reveals, "because they eat more than people who are lean."

No, genetics determine overall metabolic rate modified to a certain degree by the level of activity that a person performs. If I give the same amount of calories delivered in the same menu to two different people for two weeks, with both performing equivalent levels of activity during that period of time, they are naturally going to utilize the calories diffrently (barring any underlying endocronological, nuerological and psychiatric disorders).


Applying Occam's Razor: fat people are much more efficient at storing the calories they consume; thin people are not.

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|8.24.09 @ 3:10PM|#

Another excellent takedown of Kessler's book by Andrew Fergeson. The bit about Kessler's encounter with a Panera's cinnamon crunch bagel is priceless.

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|8.24.09 @ 4:16PM|#

a Panera's cinnamon crunch bagel

Now I'm hungry.

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The Libertarian Guy|8.24.09 @ 6:07PM|#

Your friendly Federal Government will be hiring for more Food Police soon. Put your resumes in now!

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