I approach the checkout of LaVerde’s uneasily, trying to restrict my field of view and exit the convenience store without incident. Nevertheless, the Goetze’s Caramel Chews placed in the bin next to the cashier pierce my flimsy mental blinders. From a not-too-distant memory, I hear the crinkling of plastic as the candy is unwrapped, and I feel the soft caramel melting in my mouth and drowning my taste buds. And then, the tingling, delightful jolt as I reach the white center of pure sugar. Already, I am resigned to my fate: I will invariably walk out of LaVerde’s with a Caramel Chew, or else spend the next hour haunted by the denied pleasure.

In The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite (2009), David Kessler starts off by sharing his conversations with fellow Americans who undergo daily struggles with food similar to mine. We have little in common, spanning the entire age range and socioeconomic spectrum, except a resonating theme in our stories: the powerlessness and the loss of control we feel when confronted with food. Kessler observes that “people who have been conditioned to overeat behave distinctively. They attack their food with a special kind of gusto… and they rarely leave any on their plates.” Similar observations in “The Pleasure of Eating” lead Wendell Berry to bemoan how the current American culture of eating has become a “degraded, poor, and paltry thing.”

Through interviews with everyday Americans and a presentation of a multitude of scientific research, Kessler initially lays out the evolutionary and neurological foundations promoting the human preference for the “most salient stimuli,” namely, sugar, fat, and salt. He then investigates how the food industry takes advantage of this susceptibility toward evolutionarily favorable but presently fatal foods. Kessler explores the subsequent development of various approaches to treating victims of the “culture of overeating,” even introducing his own trademarked program called “Food Rehab.”

Overeating, and thus becoming overweight, is commonly attributed to a lack of willpower or some other moral weakness. It is not grouped with the more traditional eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, but it nevertheless stems from a warped relationship with food. Not all people who overeat are overweight; I certainly do not consider myself overweight, yet I recognize that I must actively put myself on the defense whenever the doldrums of an afternoon filled with never-ending classes and homework approach, or I find my way to the Student Center even after having just eaten a meal. Although overeating does not necessarily result in obesity, Kessler astutely points out that the obesity epidemic can be almost exclusively attributed to the culture of overeating which has developed in recent decades. Conditioned hypereating, as he terms it, strikes all demographics across the nation—something deeper and more systemic is at play than just individual loss of control. I believe that, as a nation, we should not be as concerned with the epidemic of obesity so much as with its root cause: the pandemic of overeating, and the food industry that instigates it.

We eat when we are hungry. At least, that is how we are biologically designed to function. Without a shadow of doubt, however, I know that most Americans, you and I included, eat even when we are not hungry. Maybe it is the soda from the vending machine for the sake of the fizz, the free donuts a teacher brings into class during the middle of the morning, the dessert that is too good to pass up on even after a full meal—we have come to interpret our body’s desires as our body’s needs.

As Kessler explains, humans are evolutionarily attuned to seeking out high-caloric foods to satisfy the body’s energy needs. In particular, we respond positively in both a physical and emotional manner when we eat foods containing an optimal combination of sugar, fat, and salt. When we encounter such “hyperpalatable” foods—another term coined by Kessler—we just cannot seem to stop eating. The fault, though, is not entirely our own. Hyperpalatable foods stimulate the dopamine and opiod neural circuitry that forms the basis of our body’s reward system, which teaches and motivates us to pursue what is good and pleasurable. The reward system was crucial for the sake of survival even as recently as fifty years ago, when the world population was still largely undernourished. Today, unfortunately, the “optimized and potent” foods stocking supermarket shelves and filling restaurant plates exploit our reward system, successfully targeting the neurochemistry of the brain to keep us hooked.

The food industry has learned to capitalize on our human vulnerability toward hyperpalatable foods. Berry wryly notes that “[t]he ideal industrial food consumer would be strapped to a table with a tube running from the food factory directly into his or her stomach.” Since that is not yet a possibility, food industrialists must entice us to come back for more, even when we don’t want more. To do so, a food industry scientist interviewed by Kessler discloses that they specifically engineer foods to “create a multisensory experience and flavor utopia.” Another industrial insider blatantly acknowledges that the food industry is the “manipulator of the consumers’ minds and desires.” In America, our health is being thrown under the truck in favor of the success of the multibillion-dollar food corporations.

Kessler stresses the fundamental role played by the cue-urge-reward cycle that hyperpalatable foods set in motion. We learn to associate certain cues with food, such as the crinkle of a plastic wrapper or our dread of a looming physics problem set. In a sort of domino effect, this cue provides me, say, with the urge to obtain a Caramel Chew, and the anticipation of the rewarding experience provides the incentive to walk across campus to LaVerde’s market, even though I am still full from my lunch. When I finally obtain the piece of candy, I am rewarded by its delicious taste, and my positive association with Caramel Chews is reinforced. The next time a plastic wrapper crinkles or I think about the problem set due that night, the draw of the Caramel Chew grows stronger, and should I succumb to this urge often enough, I will develop a habit of visiting LaVerde’s during the middle of the day.

This type of habit-driven behavior is distinct from the goal-directed behavior present earlier in the cycle, when I would consciously respond to an external or internal cue to seek out the candy. Just as walking involves the reflexive spinal motor neurons rather than the routing of the neural pathway through the brain—how tedious and inefficient it would be if your brain had to consciously instruct your feet to flex and plant, your knee to bend, your hips to shift, and all in perfect rhythm—visiting LaVerde’s or, more generally, overeating despite not being hungry becomes a reflexive act. This sort of habit-driven behavior involves a different set of neural processes than goal-driven behavior, bypassing the conscious processing centers of the brain to unconsciously actuate motion. As we continually indulge and literally feed the cue-urge-reward cycle, we are at the same time “rewiring our brains,” warns Kessler, encoding the habit of overeating into our neural circuitry so that it becomes “resistant to extinction.”

Our “[c]hronic exposure to highly palatable foods” disconcerts Kessler. He worries that this constant conditioning “to seek continued stimulation…[will over time] compete with our conscious capacity to say no.” Kessler is emphatic that overeating stems from unnatural biological manipulation by the food industry rather than an individual flaw, as commonly believed. Conditioned hypereating is characterized by “the impulsive nature of behavior.” Nevertheless, it is our responsibility to take control where we have lost it, as outlined by his Food Rehab program.

I found one of the most important principles of Kessler’s Food Rehab is to adopt a “comprehensive approach, one that has many interlocking steps” to unlearn the habit of overeating. To combat the constant, overwhelming bombardment of cues that we experience in this modern world of physically and socially uninhibited access to hyperpalatable foods, we must replace old habits with new ones. Although I do not believe we should view food simply as the fuel which sustains us, I agree with Kessler’s conclusion that we must redefine our relationship with food and “deny it the authority to govern our lives.” This resonates with Berry’s message of living free, of living outside the control of someone or something else. The end of overeating signals the beginning of full, wholesome pleasure.