The End of Overeating?

    A very close friend of mine introduced me to a book titled, "The End of Overeating", which was written by David Nessler. He has since appeared on Oprah and Dr. Phil to discuss this read. In the book he clearly lays out the problems within our diets as North Americans. Pretty much all of the food manufacturing companies and restaurant chains are literally after our hearts (literally). throughout the book it shows us that foods all over North America contain three common ingredients; Sugar, fat and salt. These three ingredients hit us in our soft spots and make us crave certain foods. For example, you go into MacDonalds and you order the same thing you had during your prior visit because it tasted so good. The sandwich may say "less fat" but when you take a look at the sodium content within the product there is added salt compared to the regaular fatty sandwich. You go into your local supermarket such as Sobeys or Superstore and you buy everyone's favorite sandwich treat, peanut butter. However, you notice that there is peanut butter which has "less fat" than the "regular" pb and so you choose that instead. If you read the ingredients on the less fat pb, you will see it is sweetened with icing sugar, the same sugar used for cake icing. That masked sugar high makes you want to continually buy that peanut butter when really you should have bought a natural peanut butter with no added salt. We must develope nutrition awareness and nutrition literacy to know what we are putting into our bodies.
     Nessler goes on to talk about how some foods are salt on sugar and sugar on fat....What does that mean? Well, it basically means that foods become addicting because at the core of the food lies sugar or salt, covering that is a yummy layer of more sugar or salt and to top it off it is increased in taste from fat. An example of this is would be sweet potatoe fries. We all love sweet potatoe fries. they are sweet, deep fried in salt and fat and usually we eat them with some type of fat-based sauce to make them more delicious. YUMMM. Nessler provides many more examples of foods which thrive on this simple recipe.
    In conclusion I encourage you to buy this book! It is not a diet book by any means, it is designed to expose us to what is in our food and why foods are so addicting to each of us. He explores the notion of why we need will power to overcome certain food cravings. It is so important that we understand what we are eating and how to better understand food relationships. Two thumbs up to Nessler's book!