Ballpark Food Hijacks Your Brain

Former head of the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) David Kessler takes a walk through the National's Stadium in our own Washington, DC, describing what our food really is and how it traps us in a vicious cycle of eating. He is the author of the book The End of Overeating where he discusses the "conditioned hypereating" that has lead Americans towards the obesity epidemic. Reward driven eating has caused us to rely on salt on fat (French fries, for example), fat on fat (ie cheeseburgers), and sugar on fat (ie chocolate chip cookies) to power our stomachs and our brains. Read on (and the rest of the article) to understand that it is time to break the Pavlovian link between what we eat and why.

"Everyone learns them through individual life experience. A cue can be a sound (think Pavlov's famous bell, causing dogs to salivate), a sight (a fast food restaurant's conspicuous Golden Arches), a mood (always eating when elated/depressed), even an emotional memory (cookies just like grandma baked). Cues capture your attention, arouse desire and prime you for gustatory action. More importantly, they do all of the preceding whether you want them to or not: In one study, people given a snack high in fat and sugar for five straight mornings reported craving something sweet at the same time for days afterward."