David Kessler, "an American pediatrician, lawyer, author, and administrator", gave a talk at Google about why Americans are fat and, increasingly, diabetic (youtube video link).

Key points:

- Food is powerful because it is rewarding;
- We feel very good when we anticipate palatable food;
- Repeat exposure to palatable foods changes the brain, conditioning it to respond to salient cues triggering wanting and desire;
- Evidence suggests in conditioned hypereaters stimulated brain areas don't readily shut off;
- Food with high Fat+Sugar+Salt content is very palatable;
- The food industry's business model is:
         a) make Fat+Sugar+Salt available anywhere any time;
         b) make food cues ubiquitous (e.g. via ads);
         c) make it socially acceptable to eat all the time (snacks, starbucks coffee on the run, in the car, meetings, etc.);
- Experiments with rats show synergistic [conditioning] effect of Sugar+Fat;
-To break the conditioning cycle we needs to take control over the content and the timing of our meals:

 

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Tomorrow I will add, either to this post or make it a separate post, a 10X diagram of the food industry's strategy.