Blinkist Summary Book

2021-10-20 06:39:54 Hooked
Part of 12/17

fts has been a change in gender roles. From the late 1950s onward the role of American women began to change. In the late 1950s just over a third of women worked outside the home but by 2013 that number had increased to over three-quarters. While this represents progress for gender equality and greater economic prosperity for all it also left families with much less time to plan shop and cook for their meals.
Here’s the key message: Modern families have turned to unhealthy food that’s quick to prepare.
Enter the processed food industry and its new solution to this problem: convenience foods. These foods took all the work out of food preparation. Whereas before parents had to decide how much sugar to put on their child’s cereal or how much salt and fat went into their salad dressing the food industry now stepped in to take those decisions out of their hands. Everything from cereal to sodas to your complete family dinner suddenly came ready-made and heavily salted or presweetened.
So Open / Comment

2021-10-20 06:39:54 Hooked
Part of 11/17

stors’ stomachs evolved to recognize high-calorie foods and to signal to their brains that this type of food was good. So even though a starchy tuber might not taste so good when our ancestors were munching it when it hit their stomachs they realized that they liked it and wanted to eat more.
This adaptation is still with us today and your stomach is programmed to like calorie-dense foods. That’s partly why processed foods like four-cheese pizzas and double-stuff Oreos are so pleasurable to eat. It's not just that they taste good in your mouth they taste good in your stomach too purely because they’re so dense in calories.
Modern families have turned to unhealthy food that’s quick to prepare.
The processed food industry not only exploits our evolutionary biology to sell us its products it also exploits our lifestyles. In recent decades our lifestyles have changed dramatically and processed food makers have seized on this tantalizing opportunity.
One of our biggest lifestyle shi Open / Comment

2021-10-20 06:39:54 Hooked
Part of 10/17

foods.
But while this love for variety served our ancestors well today it’s encouraging us to overeat. Picture for instance the potato chip aisle in your local grocery store. There aren't just two or even three varieties there are dozens. You can choose from BBQ salt and vinegar sour cream cheddar cheese bacon . . . you get the idea. Faced with this dizzying range the ancient part of your brain finds it difficult to resist.
There’s another way our evolutionary biology works against us too. But it's not our brains that betray us this time it's our stomachs.
Our ancestors ate a lot of starchy tubers. This food was good for them; the tubers were dense in calories and gave them the large amounts of energy they needed to survive in their harsh environment. But this food also didn’t have a lot of flavor. This posed a problem; our ancestors needed to like and want to eat the calorie-rich tubers even though they didn’t taste very good. So evolution came up with a clever adaptation. Our ance Open / Comment

2021-10-20 06:39:50 Hooked
Part of 9/17

onald's in the distant past it may still have the power to sweep you up and carry you through its doors today. But if that riverbed doesn’t exist then the water can’t be channeled and there’s no risk of flood.
You’ve evolved to enjoy a wide variety of high-calorie foods.
Why do so many of us find potato chips irresistible? What is it about these salty snacks that leads one bag so often to become two or three or more? To find out we’ll need to journey back to the dawn of human evolution and look at the world of our ancestors.
That world was one of extremes; the climate swung between very hot and very cold. In order to survive our ancestors evolved to eat and enjoy a wide variety of foods – everything from meat and fish to fruit roots leaves and nuts. This ability to tolerate variety meant we could eat the plants and animals that thrived in the hot weather as well as those available in colder climes.
The key message here is: You’ve evolved to enjoy a wide variety of high-calorie Open / Comment

2021-10-20 06:39:50 Hooked
Part of 8/17

you’ve already established neural pathways in your brain that make it easy for you to think about junk food and to remember how good it tastes. What’s more the memories you make as a child or adolescent seem to be easier to remember in general. 
This means that when you drive past a billboard advertising say McDonald’s your brain will become excited by all your childhood memories of eating “happy” meals. Before you know it you might find yourself turning off to pick up a burger and fries. On the other hand if you didn’t really eat junk food as a kid then this sign won’t have any particular effect on you – you simply don’t have neural pathways associating McDonald’s with comfort or pleasure or family fun.
Harkening back to our riverbed metaphor – you can think of the McDonald’s billboard like a rain cloud. If it rains on an existing riverbed the water will all be channeled in one direction and may even cause a flood hundreds of miles downstream. In other words even though you ate McD Open / Comment

2021-10-20 06:39:49 Hooked
Part of 7/17

asting on frosted Pop-Tarts after school. Although these memories might seem innocent they play a major role in keeping you hooked on processed foods throughout your adult life.
The reason for this goes back to how your brain is wired.
When you have an exciting or stimulating experience your brain creates a permanent memory of it. That memory is stored as a neural pathway ; a physical connection between two neurons in your brain. Every time you have that experience again or even think about it the neural pathway is strengthened. This makes it easier for you to think about that memory in the future.
The key message here is this: Your childhood eating habits are still affecting you today.
These neural pathways are a bit like riverbeds: every time water flows over it the riverbed is carved deeper into the rock.
When you eat processed food your brain becomes excited because of the high levels of sugar salt and fat. So if you had a lot of experiences eating processed food as a kid then Open / Comment

2021-10-20 06:39:49 Hooked
Part of 6/17

ecifically scientists believe that addiction hinges on how fast a substance can get into your bloodstream and travel to your brain. The quicker a substance can travel the more addictive it is. For instance the reason tobacco gets us hooked is that it takes just ten seconds from your first puff on a cigarette for the nicotine to affect your brain.
Disturbingly sugar salt and fat – the hallmarks of processed foods – only take about half a second to start affecting your brain. So when you put something sweet on your tongue like your favorite ice cream or donut the sugar changes your brain chemistry 20 times faster than both tobacco and crack cocaine. The sheer speed at which sugar salt and fat reach your brain is enough to excite your neurons and leave you craving more.
Your childhood eating habits are still affecting you today.
Many people have fond childhood memories of eating processed foods. The author remembers joyfully pouring sugar on his Cap’n Crunch breakfast cereal and fe Open / Comment

2021-10-20 06:39:48 Hooked
Part of 5/17

se their stomachs are so reduced. What’s more their appetite is drastically diminished too. This seems to indicate that appetite control is located in the stomach.
But here’s the thing: this reduction in appetite doesn’t last long.
This is the key message: Your brain controls your appetite but addiction can control your brain.
After about a year many bariatric patients start to regain the large appetites they had before the surgery even though their stomachs are still just as small and get full very quickly. This can lead to devastating consequences: with their returning appetite some patients eat until their reduced stomachs become engorged – or even burst. This disturbing phenomenon has led scientists to conclude that hunger is in fact all in the mind. As one relapsed patient remarked “the problem is that they only operated on my stomach not my brain. ”
This revelation firmly supports the idea that food can be addictive; given addiction is something that happens in the brain.
Sp Open / Comment

2021-10-20 06:39:45 Hooked
Part of 4/17

d hard to stop. The key here is some people. In the same way that most people who drink alcohol or occasionally use recreational drugs aren't addicted to them most people who eat processed food aren't addicted to it either. All that matters is that some people do become addicted making certain foods just like alcohol tobacco and cocaine potentially addictive.
Your brain controls your appetite but addiction can control your brain.
For many years scientists and gastronomes the world over assumed that our appetites were controlled by our stomachs. When our stomachs were full we felt full and when our stomachs were empty we felt hungry again. But in recent years scientists have discovered that appetite is controlled by our brains rather than our stomachs.
This discovery has been in part thanks to the rise of bariatric surgery a medical procedure that reduces the size of an obese person’s stomach. After this surgery patients can only consume very small amounts of food at a time becau Open / Comment

2021-10-20 06:39:44 Hooked
Part of 3/17

es of food and were losing control. They couldn't stop eating – even when they wanted to.
But what kinds of foods are people addicted to?
By putting participants into an MRI scanner researchers have been able to study our brain activity when we taste our favorite foods. Incredibly when some people taste their favorite fast foods such as cheeseburgers fried chicken and ice cream their brains show a pattern of activity that’s typically associated with taking cocaine. Scientists have concluded that some people’s brains respond in the same way to junk food as they would to addictive drugs. In both cases their brains shout “This is good I want more!”
Of course many of us eat junk food from time to time and most don’t lose control over how much of it we eat. So doesn’t that prove that it’s not addictive?
Well the fact that most of us can eat this food without becoming addicted doesn’t matter. In fact a useful definition of addiction is that it's a repetitive behavior that some people fin Open / Comment