What I Just Finished

If you've ever wondered why you just can't stop eating certain foods, even when you have admirable self discipline in other areas, this book is for you.

From Publishers Weekly:

Conditioned hypereating is a biological challenge, not a character flaw, says Kessler, former FDA commissioner under presidents Bush and Clinton). Here Kessler (A Question of Intent) describes how, since the 1980s, the food industry, in collusion with the advertising industry, and lifestyle changes have short-circuited the body's self-regulating mechanisms, leaving many at the mercy of reward-driven eating. Through the evidence of research, personal stories (including candid accounts of his own struggles) and examinations of specific foods produced by giant food corporations and restaurant chains, Kessler explains how the desire to eat—as distinct from eating itself—is stimulated in the brain by an almost infinite variety of diabolical combinations of salt, fat and sugar. Although not everyone succumbs, more people of all ages are being set up for a lifetime of food obsession due to the ever-present availability of foods laden with salt, fat and sugar. A gentle though urgent plea for reform, Kessler's book provides a simple food rehab program to fight back against the industry's relentless quest for profits while an entire country of people gain weight and get sick. According to Kessler, persistence is all that is needed to make the perceptual shifts and find new sources of rewards to regain control.

What I'm Reading Now

I know this one's been around for a while, but better late than never.

From Publishers Weekly

Schlosser's incisive history of the development of American fast food indicts the industry for some shocking crimes against humanity, including systematically destroying the American diet and landscape, and undermining our values and our economy. The first part of the book details the postwar ascendance of fast food from Southern California, assessing the impact on people in the West in general. The second half looks at the product itself: where it is manufactured (in a handful of enormous factories), what goes into it (chemicals, feces) and who is responsible (monopolistic corporate executives). In harrowing detail, the book explains the process of beef slaughter and confirms almost every urban myth about what in fact "lurks between those sesame seed buns." Given the estimate that the typical American eats three hamburgers and four orders of french fries each week, and one in eight will work for McDonald's in the course of their lives, few are exempt from the insidious impact of fast food. Throughout, Schlosser fires these and a dozen other hair-raising statistical bullets into the heart of the matter. While cataloguing assorted evils with the tenacity and sharp eye of the best investigative journalist, he uncovers a cynical, dismissive attitude to food safety in the fast food industry and widespread circumvention of the government's efforts at regulation enacted after Upton Sinclair's similarly scathing novel exposed the meat-packing industry 100 years ago. By systematically dismantling the industry's various aspects, Schlosser establishes a seminal argument for true wrongs at the core of modern America. (Jan.) Forecast: This book will find a healthy, young audience; it's notable that the Rolling Stone article on which this book was based generated more reader mail than any other piece the magazine ran in the 1990s.

I Don't Usually Watch Horror Films, But . . .

. . . I did watch this one, and if you care about what you put into your body, you should, too.

"In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield's Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms' Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here."

What's Up? If I'm not careful, it's gonna be my weight

This place is gonna get me in trouble. We had cake during orientation. There are soft peppermints on the secretary's desk. Yesterday morning there were donuts, and by lunch slices of homemade carrot cake appeared in the breakroom. It's easy saying "no" when all you have in the fridge are fruits, veggies, and whole grains. It's a lot harder when you're surrounded by the enemy.

The Benefits of Being a Reader

There are many benefits to being a reader--you're never bored; you have a great vocabulary; you do well on the SATs . . . But the main one is all the important stuff you learn.

For example, just yesterday I was reading the latest issue of Prevention magazine and encountered this life changing fact:

72% of women having a good hair day have more spring in their step.

Good job, Prevention editors. I feel both smarter and healthier now that I know that.

Don't you?

Functional Fitness

Health experts recommend what they call functional fitness—parking at the far end of the parking lot so you have to walk farther to the door, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, doing stretches while you talk on the phone, delivering messages to co-workers in person instead of always relying on e-mail. Just ways, they say, of adding extra activity into a lifestyle that has become increasingly sedentary.

I try to do these things, don’t you? After all, I don’t really want to become a little old lady who can’t push her shopping cart in the grocery store or even get up from her easy chair without assistance.

But I have to admit, some days I’d like to ask my husband to just let me out at the door. And, wouldn’t it be fun, just once, to ignore the stairs, plop down in front of the elevator, and enjoy an ice cream cone? Two scoops. And yes, sprinkles too.