It is called ” The End of Overeating ” and since I don’t know if it will ever be translated in Italy, I read the book in English: written by David Kessler, who belongs to the commission of the US Food & Drug Administration, this book explains why it is he eats too much, and a phenomenon that Kessler calls ” conditioned overeating syndrome “, whereby more and more people have problems with hunger and compulsive appetite, nervous hunger, hunger for sweets, inability to satiate until they become addicted to food itself, to be slaves to food, to feel at the mercy of their enormous appetite.

But why is all this happening? Why do we end up eating so much? To answer this question, Kessler spends 300 pages in which he explains, through a series of surveys and studies on the behavior of compulsive eaters, the growing problem of obesity and overweight.

There are three reasons why people eat so much:
– addiction to industrial foods, restaurants, fast foods, snacks and commercial products: from what we serve in restaurants to what we buy at the supermarket, the foods we we are employees act on multiple levels. On the one hand, the additives that are added affect our brains, making it difficult for us to say enough and get full. So one reason is chemistry. On the other hand, the combination of nutrients – sugar, fat and salt – is managed in a way that is both fattening and captivating. Kessler demonstrates that even sugar-free products have sugars that push us to be addicted to them, just as light or fat-free products have fat particles that make them palatable anyway.The palatability or palatability of food is created specifically to make us addicted to it, and not to make us satiated easily.
Addiction occurs not only on the palate level, but also on the olfactory, visual and auditory level: this does nothing but satisfy our pleasure centers, acting like a drug.
So the problem is not the sugars per se or the fats per se, but the mix. If many people who claim to be chocolate lovers are offered unsweetened cocoa, they will say no. If a lot of people who say they are hungry for sweets were offered simple lumps of sugar, it would be easy to get sick.
Both the restaurant and the company that offers snacks have one goal : to make us their customers, to make us come back,make sure that we will continue to buy their products.  Even people who try to “cook healthy” often do nothing but create light versions of supermarket products, well-known snacks, snacks. The reference to the original thus becomes continuous. Think about it.

– the fact that food is everywhere : we bring the products we love home from the supermarket or order them online, when we go out, bars, pizzerias, restaurants and chain stores almost never close. And if that wasn’t enough, the machines take care of it: vending machines or refreshment points are everywhere, and this means that we always have food in front of our eyes. Added to this is a real media bombardment that reinforces our gluttony. Chefs, cooking programs, new products, including dietary products: food is now everywhere. A continuous temptation that translates into a continuous stimulus to our brain.

– the dismantling of dietary rules: if in the past we ate only at regular times, today snacks and snacks are the basis of our daily life. Okay, if we then reduce or know how to compensate for those calories at lunch or dinner. But the problem is, most people can’t do it anymore. As a result, the more times a day he eats, the more he gains weight.
How to get out? On page two we see some tips to stop eating a lot and break the addiction.