Summary of the book "Hooked" - By Michael Moss
Key Concepts in this book:
- Our brains' responses to food are only beginning to be understood by science.
- Your appetite is controlled by your brain, yet addiction has the ability to dominate your brain.
- Your dietary habits from childhood are still affecting you today.
- You've developed the ability to consume a wide range of high-calorie foods.
- Unhealthy, quick-to-prepare cuisine has become popular among modern families.
- Cutting calories from processed foods may not be the solution.
- Parents wanting to give their children a healthy start.
- Anyone struggling to lose weight.
- Psychology buffs looking for fresh insights.
What am I getting out of it? Understanding the full cost of consuming fast food for a low price.
How much do you have control over what you eat? Do you choose to buy that greasy burger at a fast-food restaurant on your way home from work — or are you being controlled by some unseen force? You might be surprised and disturbed by the response.
This summary delves into human psychology to discover why and how we developed a fondness for fast food. You'll learn about the seductive effects of fast food on your brain, as well as the true cost of putting our family's health in the hands of the food business, from sugary cereal to a variety of packs of potato chips to microwave convenience meals.
- You'll discover what sugar has in common with alcohol and cigarettes.
- How a childhood junk food habit can lead to adult obesity.
- Why a calorie isn't a calorie in this summary.
Ashley Gearhardt, a Yale graduate student, was researching our relationship with food in 2007. And she made a stunning discovery when she invited people to her laboratory to chat about food.
The scenarios people told sounded eerily similar to those presented by drug and alcohol addicts. They discussed strong desires and how difficult it was to give up specific meals. They even mentioned quitting their social life in order to avoid the items they sought.
Here's the main point: Our brains' responses to food are only beginning to be understood by science.
Gearhardt decided to put his theory to the test. She created a survey in which participants were asked if they agreed with phrases such as "I consume considerably more of some foods than I planned" and "I feel sad or frightened when I quit eating particular foods." Finally, Gearhardt came to the conclusion that 15% of the American population fit the criteria for food addiction. Furthermore, the vast majority of them were badly hooked. These people were eating too much of particular foods and lost control. They couldn't stop eating, no matter how hard they tried.
But what foods do people become addicted to?
Researchers were able to investigate our brain activity when we tasted our favourite dishes by placing individuals in an MRI scanner. Surprisingly, when some people eat their favourite fast meals, such as cheeseburgers, fried chicken, or ice cream, their brains exhibit a pattern of activity similar to that seen when they use cocaine. Scientists have discovered that certain people's brains react to junk food in the same way they do to addictive medications. Their brains scream, “This is good, I want more!” in both circumstances.
Of course, many of us indulge in junk food from time to time, and the majority of us maintain control over how much we consume. Isn't that evidence that it isn't addictive?
It doesn't matter that most of us can eat this stuff without becoming addicted. In reality, one useful definition of addiction is a pattern of behaviour that some people find difficult to break. Some people are the key here. Most people who drink alcohol or use recreational drugs on a regular basis aren't hooked to them, and most people who eat processed food aren't addicted to it either. All that matters is that some people become addicted, making certain meals potentially addictive, just like alcohol, tobacco, and cocaine.
2. Your appetite is controlled by your brain, yet addiction has the ability to dominate your brain.
For many years, scientists and gastronomes all around the world assumed that our stomachs were in charge of our cravings. We felt full when our stomachs were full, and we felt hungry when our stomachs were empty. However, scientists have just found that our brains, not our stomachs, control our hunger.
The rise of bariatric surgery, a medical treatment that reduces the size of an obese person's stomach, has contributed to this discovery. Because their stomachs are so little after this surgery, individuals can only eat extremely small amounts of food at a time. Furthermore, their hunger is significantly reduced. This appears to show that the stomach is in charge of hunger control.
But here's the thing: this decrease in appetite is only temporary.
The main lesson is that your brain regulates your appetite, but addiction has the ability to control your brain.
Even though their stomachs are still small and they get full quickly, many bariatric patients regain their large appetites after about a year. This can have disastrous consequences: some patients eat until their decreased stomachs become engorged – or even explode – as their hunger returns. Scientists have concluded that hunger is, in reality, entirely in the mind as a result of this distressing occurrence. "The trouble is that they only operated on my stomach, not my brain," one relapsed patient explained.
Given that addiction is a brain-based phenomenon, this revelation firmly supports the premise that food can be addictive.
Addiction, according to scientists, is determined by how quickly a chemical enters your system and travels to your brain. The more addicting a chemical is, the faster it can travel. For example, the nicotine from your first inhale on a cigarette affects your brain in just ten seconds, which is why tobacco gets us hooked.
Surprisingly, sugar, salt, and fat - the trademarks of processed foods – start impacting your brain in less than half a second. Sugar affects your brain chemistry 20 times faster than smoke and cracks cocaine when you place anything sweet on your tongues, such as your favourite ice cream or doughnut. Sugar, salt, and fat reach your brain at such a rapid rate that it excites your neurons and makes you crave more.
3. Your dietary habits from childhood are still affecting you today.
Many people have good memories of consuming processed foods as a child. After school, the author remembers happily pouring sugar on his Cap'n Crunch breakfast cereal and devouring frosted Pop-Tarts. Although these memories may appear benign, they play a significant influence on your adult life's addiction to processed meals.
The reason behind this has to do with the way your brain works.
When you have a thrilling or stimulating encounter, your brain stores the information in lasting memory. That memory is preserved as a neural pathway in your brain, which is a physical link between two neurons. The neural pathway is strengthened every time you have that event or merely think about it. This will make it easier for you to recall that recollection later.
The main point here is that your childhood dietary habits continue to affect you today.
These brain pathways are similar to riverbeds in that they are cut deeper into the rock each time water passes over them.
Because of the high levels of sugar, salt, and fat in processed foods, your brain becomes aroused. If you ate a lot of processed food as a youngster, your brain has already formed neural pathways that make it easier for you to think about junk food and remember how nice it tastes. Furthermore, it appears that memories made as a youngster or adolescent are easier to recall in general.
This means that if you drive past a billboard for McDonald's, your brain will be triggered by all of your early memories of consuming "happy" meals. You can find yourself pulling off to get a burger and fries before you realise it. If you didn't eat junk food as a kid, on the other hand, this sign will have no effect on you because you don't have neural pathways linking McDonald's with comfort, joy, or family fun.
Returning to our riverbed analogy, the McDonald's billboard can be compared to a rain cloud. If it rains on an established riverbed, all of the water will flow in one direction, perhaps causing a deluge hundreds of miles downstream. To put it another way, even if you haven't eaten at McDonald's in a long time, it may still be able to scoop you up and take you through its doors today. However, if that riverbed does not exist, the water will not be able to be channelled, and there will be no risk of flooding.
4. You've developed the ability to consume a wide range of high-calorie foods.
Why are potato chips so appealing to so many of us? What is it about salty foods that cause one bag to become two, three, or even four? To find out, we'll have to go back to the beginning of human evolution and examine our forefathers' surroundings.
The climate alternated from extremely hot and extremely cold in that realm. To survive, our forefathers had to learn to eat and enjoy a wide variety of foods, including meat, fish, fruit, roots, leaves, and nuts. We were able to eat both plants and animals that grew in hot conditions and those that thrived in colder climates because of our ability to accept variety.
The main point is that you've evolved to appreciate a wide range of high-calorie foods.
While our ancestors benefited from this love of variety, it now encourages us to overeat. Take, for example, the potato chip section of your local supermarket. There are dozens of different variations, not just two or three. BBQ sauce, salt & vinegar, sour cream, cheddar cheese, bacon, and so on are all options. When confronted with such a dazzling array, the ancient portion of your brain struggles to resist.
Our evolutionary biology also works against us in another way. This time, though, our stomachs, not our minds, betray us.
Our forefathers and mothers ate a lot of starchy tubers. The tubers were high in calories and provided them with the large amounts of energy they required to survive in their harsh environment. This dish, on the other hand, lacked flavour. This caused difficulty because our forefathers needed to like and want to consume the calorie-dense tubers, despite their unpleasant flavour. As a result, evolution devised a cunning adaptation. Our forefathers' stomachs developed the ability to distinguish high-calorie foods and communicate this information to their brains. That, even though a starchy tuber would not have tasted so delicious to our forefathers.
They realised they loved it and wanted to eat more when it touched their tummies.
This adaptation is still present today, and your stomach is wired to prefer high-calorie foods. That's why manufactured foods like four-cheese pizzas and Oreos with double-stuffing are so tasty. They don't just taste nice on your tongue; they also taste good in your stomach, owing to their high-calorie content.
5. Unhealthy, quick-to-prepare cuisine has become popular among modern families.
The processed food industry makes use of our evolutionary biology as well as our lifestyles to promote its products. Our lifestyles have altered considerably in recent decades, and processed food manufacturers have grasped this enticing opportunity.
A shift in gender roles has been one of our most significant lifestyle changes. From the late 1950s onward, American women's roles began to shift. Just over a third of women worked outside the home in the late 1950s, but by 2013, that percentage had risen to nearly three-quarters. While this is a step forward for gender equality and increased economic prosperity for all, it also means that families have less time to plan, shop for, and prepare meals.
Here's the main point: Unhealthy, quick-to-prepare cuisine has become popular among modern families.
This is where the processed food industry and its new answer to the problem, convenience foods, come in. These foods eliminated the need for food preparation entirely. Previously, parents had to determine how much sugar to put in their child's cereal or how much salt and fat to put in their salad dressing; however, the food business has now stepped in to take those options away from them. Everything immediately arrived ready-made, overly salted or presweetened, from cereal to drinks to your entire family dinner.
There was, however, a catch. When busy American families tucked into their microwaveable pizzas, enchiladas, or pot pies, they had no idea what components were in their new cuisine.
They would have been more cautious if they had known. Because, rather than only adding sugar to foods that we anticipate to be sweet, such as cereal and sweets, the processed food business began adding it to everything. In reality, sugar is found in three-quarters of all grocery store items, from bread to yoghurt to spaghetti sauces.
They accomplished this for a simple reason: the sweeter something is, the more difficult it is to stop eating it. That's because our appetite is controlled by two unique areas of our brains, dubbed the go brain and the stop brain by neuroscientists. The go brain makes us want to consume more, while the stop brain tells us when we've had enough. However, the processed food business has devised a method of circumventing this delicate system. The bliss point is the precise point at which a product becomes so sweet, and our brains become so stimulated by eating it, that our stop system becomes deactivated. When this happens, we eat mindlessly, and we eat mindlessly, and we eat mindlessly, and we eat mindlessly, and we eat mindlessly, and we eat mind
6. Cutting calories from processed foods may not be the solution.
In 2015, the processed food business was slammed by a powerful opponent. Michelle Obama, the former first lady of the United States, has openly blamed fast food for the obesity epidemic in America's children. She urged the business to make changes to its goods to make them healthier and less harmful. The industry responded by making certain modifications, but the question remains whether these improvements were sufficient.
Processed food manufacturers were already attempting to improve their products and their negative public image before the former first lady's intervention. Major food companies such as PepsiCo, Kelloggs, and Coca-Cola created the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation and promised to eliminate 1.5 trillion calories from their products. These weren't just words on a page. Between 2007 and 2012, these companies went from selling 60.4 trillion to 54 trillion calories per year. But does cutting calories actually help you lose weight? Possibly not.
The main point is that reducing calories in processed meals may not be enough to fix the situation.
In reality, new evidence suggests that the link between processed foods and weight gain is exceedingly complicated. A study published in the Journal of Cell Metabolism in 2019 revealed that weight gain is caused by more than only the high-calorie content of processed foods. The researchers discovered this by feeding 20 people a highly-processed diet for 14 days before switching them to an unprocessed diet for the same period of time. Importantly, the fat, sugar, salt, and calorie content of the two diets were identical. Despite this, the highly processed diet caused the subjects to gain weight.
The researchers were unable to explain why the processed food diet-induced weight increase, although other scientists believe they are getting closer.
The issue could be that your digestive system is unable to calculate the number of calories in highly processed foods. This may not appear to be a significant issue, but it is. Your stomach can precisely calculate how many calories are in a meal whenever you consume it. This information is then used by your body to determine how many calories to store as fat and how many calories to burn through your metabolism. So, if your body can't figure out how many calories are in a meal, your metabolism won't work properly, and you'll store too many calories as fat.
So, even though the processed food sector has reduced the number of calories in its goods, people may still acquire weight as a result of such items.
The fundamental message in this summary is that processed food hooks us in a variety of ways. It can be nearly impossible for some people to make healthy choices, given their childhood memories of eating junk food and the vast range of sugar-laden products available. Families have grown accustomed to the convenience of ready-to-eat foods, but the troubling truth is that these meals are not well suited to our digestive systems. They are causing us to acquire weight, as well as our children.
Take the joy out of junk eating with some practical tips.
Fast foods are designed to deceive our senses, but there are several easy methods to reject their appeal. If you must have junk food in your home, try removing it from its brightly coloured packaging. For example, Oreo cookies could be placed in a cookie jar. When you put processed goods in simple packaging, your brain will be less aroused every time you see them in your kitchen cupboard.
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