PROCESSED FOOD: KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON
The goal is to get you hooked. ~David Kessler, MD (1951 – )
The End to Overeating (2009)
FIRST THINGS FIRST
Today’s menu is for Mother’s Day. Wow the petticoat off Mom with a flashy exhibit of your cooking skills with two things that most people haven’t even tried: salt-crust cooking and Hollandaise sauce. Maybe you’ll not be cooking up both brunch and dinner, so use the Hollandaise for either one. And if you are, so much the better. Make it twice and you’ll be that much more confident. An alternative to putting the sauce on a steamed vegetable at dinner is to put it on the fish. Select the best fish of the day at the market. And if you don’t want to go the fish-in-salt-crust route, you can always poach a salmon. Hollandaise sauce on salmon is a classic.
If you have a little adventurer in you, cooking in a salt crust offers a very big sizzle and Mom will no doubt wonder, Where did you learn that? just smile and say, I learned it all for you! Less is more, in the explanation department. And if you don’t want fish, then a Loin of Pork in Salt Crust is equally impressive. Leek & Potato Soup is a lovely way to begin a meal, simple and sublime in a delicacy that will prime your guests for more to come. Cherries Jubilee is also high on the impressive scale; I’ve added it from tomorrow’s post. This will get you many points in the adventurous cook department. What’s not to like about serving dessert covered in flames? And it is so easy a child could do it. Except for the igniting part. Way to keep children engaged in the community dining table concept.
I’ve suggested an appetizer of Guacamole in Hard-Cooked Eggs because, well, maybe you didn’t have the gang over for Cinco de Mayo and it would be a shame not to make up a batch now that we’ve talked about it. Can’t you just taste those ripened avocados? And when was the last time you served something in hard-cooked eggs? It’s an interesting throw-back-to-simpler-times delivery system for the guac. Put a few corn chips on the side, for added texture. Or stick a corn chip into each guac’d egg for a little 50′s flair.
What to do with the leftover egg yolks? Hmmm. You could make up an egg salad; substitute tofu for the absent egg whites and you’ve got a high-protein lunch for work.  And as long as you’re making the guac, why not have the margaritas as well? I recommend them while reading this book.
BRAVELY CROSSING THE NEW MINEFIELD
The most depressing book you must read, The End to Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, by David A Kessler, MD tells just how the corporate food industry – food manufacturing companies and restaurants – go about creating foods that maximize craving, encourage overeating and feed the desire to come back for more. The food trifecta – salt, sugar and fat – are doing us in, creating a culture of overeating that many feel powerless to counteract. Ever wonder why you don’t eat more healthy food, smaller portions and three meals a day with little or no snacking? The food industry doesn’t want you to, and they go to great lengths to see that you eat things that support their financial health despite undermining the health of their customers. It’s no secret where their priorities lay.
The picture painted by the pediatrician and FDA commissioner under Presidents Bush the elder and Clinton looked so bleak in early chapters that I had to jump to the ending to see that there is any hope at all to conquer this marauding marketing monster that’s taken up residence on just about every street in America. Oh, and it’s not just in the marketing; it’s in the actual food.
If this is less than a rousing review it is because the book is hard to read. The inside look at what is intentionally happening in commercial kitchens all over the country, guided by food consultants explaining why certain things are being done to the food, is difficult to hear. I didn’t want to believe the things the author is telling me, but soldiered on because my need to know was greater than my desire to remain in the dark. I’m sorry if this doesn’t inspire you to run right out and pick up a copy because it should be required reading. However painful the message of what has become of our food supply, the sickness that it has created is much worse. Reading this book is the first step for resisting the forces of hypereating, as he calls it, the book being the very antidote for the problem itself. Knowledge is power and, in the case of eating, knowledge is essential.
The book does a good job of explaining why we have such a hard time stepping away from the doughnut. The author sees chronic eating as “a biological challenge, not a character flaw” that needs to be managed, and one that probably cannot be cured. Diets fail because they leave us feeling deprived, and actually magnify rather than alleviate the problem. Modifying behavior – doing the right thing – is only possible if it leaves us feeling satisfied rather than hungry or resentful.
The cure suggested for the American problem of chronic overeating is to first become informed about the prepared food situation that has become the norm in this country as a way for companies to maximize profits. If they can get us to eat just a little bit more and thereby pay more for the size upgrade, they will have achieved their goal. And, oh, the measures they take to succeed. Dr Kessler reveals the tricks of the trade and the clever ways that food companies ply our taste buds with all kinds of products – candy, snacks, processed foods in grocery stores, take-out and dine-in restaurant meals – that satisfy our most sublime taste sensations with food that is designed to deliver complexity of texture and a multiplicity of layered flavors before literally melting in our mouths. Hearing about the concerted process of layering salt on top of fat on top of sugar on top of fat is as fascinating as it is nauseating. A veritable train wreck of tastes, destined to slide down the gullets of a nation convinced it is hungry all the time. With each layer of ‘flavor,’ companies’ profits grow as surely as consumers’ belt sizes.
Step two is changing the little daily habits that sabotage our will to eat well by changing behaviors that compete for food and cue the doughnuts. The doctor is good at providing examples, like staying out of the kitchen when you first come home, or taking a different route to work to avoid seeing favorite food-to-go outlets. The third step is to develop a conscious consciousness, having our intellectual way with our minds when it comes to thoughts about food. We know we want it, but we also know that we don’t want to want it. We want desperately to want to not want it. And so we have to convince ourselves. The fourth important concept is having the support of the people around us. Community matters, and in issues of food, it matters a lot.
Hypereating is a complex problem, encouraged by myriad counter-influences. Unfortunately there is no silver bullet; phen-fen was taken off the market. The author tells us why it was such an effective therapy, enabling many to withstand the pull of that doughnut. The solution can only be found in a series of interconnected strategies that keep us on track and catch us when we lapse into old behaviors because we are, after all, human. He concludes:
Eventually, we can begin to think differently about food, recognizing its
value to sustain us . . . and denying it the authority to govern our lives.
It saddens me to think that eating will have to become, for many people, more of an exercise in intelligent, deliberate decision-making than in spontaneous, pleasure-seeking in order to for healthy decisions about eating to prevail. Besides discovering the ways that simple will power and desire to improve eating habits are overpowered, it throws light on the problem, as entrenched as it is in both the food industry and the public’s eating habits. Only by knowing about the intricacies of the dilemma have we any hope to counteract those forces. It will take more than just will power; our three Is for moderating behavior – information, intelligence and intention – are our allies.
