Lyndsey Layton, “David Kessler Knew That Some Foods Are Hard to Resist; Now He Knows Why,” The Washington Post, April 27, 2009

Discussing former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler’s book about overeating, Washington Post staff writer Lyndsey Layton opens with an anecdote about Kessler climbing into dumpsters behind fast-food restaurants to find the ingredient lists for some of the foods they offer. He apparently found high-calorie, fat, sugar, and salt content in many of his favorite foods and contends they
are designed in a way to spur the diner to eat faster and eat more. Kessler reports that he was a yo-yo dieter whose weight has ranged from 160 to 230 pounds and back again numerous times. He also claims that he was able to stabilize his weight only by making a shift in the way he thought about food.

Layton quotes Kessler as saying, “We did this with cigarettes. It used to be sexy and glamorous but now people look at it and say, ‘That’s not my friend, that’s not something I want.’ We need to make a cognitive shift as a country and change the way we look at food. Instead of viewing that huge plate of nachos and fries as a guilty pleasure, we have to . . . look at it and say, ‘That’s not going to make me feel good. In fact, that’s disgusting.’”