The End of Overeating by David Kessler

I’m spoiled. By spoiled I mean that my greatest luxury is that I can wake up in the morning and write about whatever the heck I want to write about. Having to write about Ray Peat all month? Well, drudgery has set in. I wanna talk about something that is interesting to me now – like, today, and Ray Peat’s stances on starch and how it has caused the rise in obesity (is this a joke Ray?) or estrogen just won’t do. Screw Ray May. We’re going to play and feel the day, okay?

A lot of people have contacted me over the past few months wondering how I feel about Stephan Guyenet’s recent focus on food palatability in governing weight. When I get these emails, I do get a little annoyed. I get annoyed because I’ve been writing about the role of palatability in weight set point for two years now, and thinking about it for four years – since I encountered the work of Seth Roberts.  I even gave it my own name and flippin' sweet acronym - the "Pleasure Center Activation Theory (PCAT)." This is nothing new. There is a vast amount of research and common sense pointing in that direction. And so, I address this, for about the 6th time – drawing upon a book dedicated entirely to the subject – The End of Overeating by David Kessler.

“Where traditional cuisine is meant to satisfy, American industrial food is meant to stimulate.”

For starters, when you mention the word “palatable,” many get the wrong idea. I know in some back and forth earlier this year with Aaron F. and others, that the idea of good food being the culprit of obesity didn’t sit well. And it shouldn’t. By palatable, scientists mean the ability of a food to stimulate the reward centers in the brain, more or less. And while I would never opt for a Cool Ranch Dorito over seared foie gras slung over brioche, there’s no question, in terms of the scientific definition of palatability, that the magic, chemically-enhanced, MSG-laden flavor dust on a perfectly-crunchy Dorito measures much higher on the palatability Richter scale. I had a Tabasco Cheez-it recently to remind myself of how potent modern food-like things are. And I gotta tell ya, that stuff is mesmerizing. Food like that gets ever more drug-like every time I taste it.

“To understand how eating promotes more eating – and why homeostasis is under sustained assault – we must first understand the concept of ‘palatability’ as the term is used scientifically. In everyday language, we call food palatable if it has an agreeable taste. But when scientists say a food is palatable, they are referring primarily to its capacity to stimulate the appetite and prompt us to eat more. Palatability does involve taste, of course, but, crucially, it also involves the motivation to pursue that taste. It is the reason we want more. Palatability is largely based on how food engages the full range of our senses. Usually, the most palatable foods contain some combination of sugar, fat, and salt. The sensory properties of palatable foods – the cold, creamy pleasure of a milkshake, the aroma of chocolate cake, the texture of crispy chicken wings sweetened with a honey-mustard dipping sauce – all stimulate the appetite. And it’s that stimulation, or the anticipation of that stimulation, rather than genuine hunger, that makes us put food into our moths long after our caloric needs are satisfied.”

With this broader definition you have a whole host of sensory stimuli that play a part in weight regulation. Food packaging, lighting, social setting, ambience, food color, music, aroma, crunch, texture contrast, moisture content, chewing time, fiber content – these all play a role in the sensory environment of the food experience. And these things are understood by the people who sell food successfully. The first person to conceptualize of pink lemonade or the infamous blue raspberry knew a thing or two about human senses. Heck, you can even taste test the same thing in two different types of packaging to find out which package “tastes better.” This kind of research is being done to make food as hyperpalatable as possible.

What I like about what could be called the “addiction model of obesity,” is that addiction, unlike the insulin or leptin system of the body (or recently discussed TXNIP), is not a negative feeback loop. It’s an escalation process, where you must go ever higher to achieve the same level of gratification. We know for sure that weight regulation occurs in the brain – to think that something as dominant in the brain as the relentless hunt for pleasure stimulation doesn’t play a role, or couldn’t trump the metabolic signals of leptin or TXNIP, would be foolish. It’s certainly part of the picture. How much of the picture, and whether or not Bob Ross painted it, is a question that has not been answered – and is probably highly individual.

“Eating foods high in sugar, fat, and salt makes us eat more foods high in sugar, fat, and salt. We see this clearly in both animal and human research. Barry Levin, a physician and professor at the New Jersey Medical School, demonstrated this principle with rats. He bred one strain to overfeed when a high-calorie diet was available, producing an obesity-prone rat. The other strain did not ordinarily overfeed – an obesity-resistant rat. After a period of eating extra calories, the obesity-resistant rats typically cut back their food consumption much faster than obesity-prone rats. But when both groups of rats were offered a rich, creamy liquid high in sugar and fat, those patterns changed. All the animals ate without restraint. Levin said that when they are given such a palatable combination, ‘they will just gorge themselves.’ Increasing only the fat content of a resistant rat’s diet won’t make the animal overeat or become obese. But feed it a high-fat, high-sugar diet, and it will grow just as fat as an obesity-prone rat on a high-calorie diet.”

This is an important concept to take note of. Sugar is not fattening. I lose weight rapidly eating 800 grams of sugar per day. Fat is not fattening. I remained very lean gobbling up 300 grams of fat per day for several years on a diet with about 100-150 grams of carbohydrates per day. There is no one substance that is fattening and is the culprit of all obesity. Sure, vegetable oils are a prime suspect in terms of playing a role, potentially a major one in a discussion of root causes – as they have far-reaching pro-inflammatory and anti-metabolic properties that are capable of short-circuiting the weight regulation mechanism of the human body over lifetimes and generations.

But we should instead look at foods as a whole. In general, we could say eating in restaurants is fattening. Brownies are fattening. Ice cream is fattening. Potato chips and French fries are fattening. If I eat lots of these foods I gain fat at a pretty rapid rate, at least for a few weeks. Recently I got all gung ho on Peat and began eating ice cream to appetite. But lo and behold, just like many who have a tendency towards weight gain have reported to me about Peat’s high fat/high sugar combo, I gained fat very quickly with ice cream in my diet, needing roughly 4,500-5,000 calories to satisfy my appetite instead of the normal 3,500-ish. Substituting more fruit and juice and starch for the high fat content in the ice cream strips the fat off quickly, and lowers my appetite tremendously.

But even with these generalizations, much complexity remains. Monotony trumps all, removing the pleasure away from what would otherwise stimulate the pleasure circuitry. Eat nothing but ice cream or French fries and your appetite will likely plummet and you will lose weight.

Further confusing the issue, the largest my appetite has ever been was after prolonged calorie restriction. I wasn’t really an “addict” when it came to food until I did that. Before that my appetite regulated itself pretty well without ever thinking much about all this health and nutrition stuff. It certainly wasn’t a case of eating “fat, sugar, and salt makes you want to eat more fat, sugar, and salt.” Instead, it was NOT eating fat, sugar, and salt that made me want to eat to the point of sheer agony of fat, sugar, and salt. After doing that for long enough, my appetite regulated itself once again, and fat, sugar, and salt began to once again lose their relentless appeal.

On the program I devised on how to raise your metabolism, nearly everyone has noted a huge drop in cravings for sugary foods and other high pleasure items. Why is that? Also, pigging out on ice cream which I have done on two occasions this year, left me totally sick of ice cream and craving cardboard by the end of a week.

Similarly, the 5-year old girl that I recently watched overcome nightmares and bed wetting by eating ice cream and whatever else she wanted totally unrestrained, started out eating two ice cream cones in one sitting, then moved to one, then asked for ice cream and had two licks before throwing it away, and now doesn't even ask for it with dinner anymore.  Ice cream lost its excitement.  It didn't become more appealing and suddenly catapult the kid into obesity. 

And what about all the intuitive eating preachers like Geneen Roth and Jon Gabriel who have had great success telling people to eat whatever the hell they want, only to find that giving themselves permission to eat anything and everything they wanted ended up making them lose weight – as removing the stigma of forbidden foods and the emotions like guilt and reward around eating just made people crave healthier foods and lose their appetite?

My suspicion is that the one key factor left out of the whole equation is addiction proneness. I do think addiction proneness can be diminished if not eliminated entirely by increasing the metabolic rate, lowering stress hormones, and removing all of the psychological baggage surrounding food – certainly getting away from the concept of food as a treat, reward, or a form of entertainment.

Anyway, it’s all very fascinating, and a big part of the big picture – as big or bigger than Bob Ross’s happy little trees. To hear former head of the FDA, David Kessler, talking about his conclusions, scroll down to watch a tv interview with him...

Here are some other interesting Kessler quotes to make ya go hmmm….

“Animals, humans included, seem to have a built-in preference for features larger than those that occur naturally. Ethologists, scientists who study animal behavior, have tried to understand the attraction of the ‘super-normal stimuli.’ Consider the oystercatcher, a shorebird with black-and-white plumage, a red bill, and brightly colored legs. Back in the 1950’s, Dutch ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen conducted now-classic studies of the bird’s incubation behavior and discovered something astonishing: When presented with a choice between brooding its own small egg and the giant egg of a much larger bird, the oystercatcher invariably chose to sit on the giant one.”


“Just as a compulsive gambler can’t place a single bet and feel satisfied, many people can’t stop after a few bites of hyperpalatable food. We have become conditioned to seek more reward. The barricades to repetitive behavior have been toppled. We keep looking for the next big wow.”

Dopamine and Weight Loss

In the book 180 Degree Metabolism: The Smart Strategy for Fat Loss, I mentioned how the primary driver of leptin resistance and/or excess fat gain in general without the corresponding decrease in hunger and increase in metabolism is unknown. With some All-American speculation, I came up with what I believed to be the 5 most common causes of excess fat accumulation.

Dieting, stress, inflammation, and excessive fructose intake all got their own special chapters. In addition to that, I mentioned Seth Roberts and the Flavor-Calorie Association Theory of obesity that I got super nerded-out on last week in THIS POST.

Out of all causes of obesity; however, there is no doubt that Seth’s explanation – that foods that exert the most stimulus to the reward centers in our brains and thus causing a rise in weight set point (the “ponderstat”), is the most promising. Not only is it the most promising, but it helps to explain multiple phenomena. Let’s get into it a little deeper, and clear up some of the misconceptions that metastasized last week.

First off, I explained my current diet, which contains about 1/3 of the fat that I have been eating over the last several years (call it 60-70 grams per day averaged out throughout the week as opposed to 180-210 grams per day) as “bland.”

Oops, “bland” is a major misnomer. Actually, my food is FAR more flavorful than it has been over the past several years, as I have substituted things like spices and potent salsa LIKE THIS for butter, creamy cheeses, heavy use of coconut oil, and fatty cuts of meat. No one would argue that salsa has less flavor than any of the above-mentioned foods. My salsa is like a nuclear bomb hitting my tongue.

But what my food is, or at least was initially, was less pleasurable to eat. Eating boiled potatoes with salsa as opposed to eating fried potatoes covered in parmesan cheese and truffle oil has a different level of satisfaction – just like eating a strawberry on a lettuce leaf has a different level of satisfaction than eating a chocolate-covered strawberry topped with whipped cream on a shortcake.

Now, if you love potatoes covered with creamy Fromager D’Affinois, there’s no foreseeable reason to stop eating them that way. That wasn’t the point. The point, rather, is furthering the discussion about ways you can get your body to cooperate with losing weight if weight loss is something you are seeking. In other words, what can you eat that helps increase your metabolism in relation to your appetite?

First, let’s examine the extreme importance of that question. If it takes 3,000 calories to satisfy your appetite, and your metabolism burns 3,000 calories in a normal day, then eating to appetite will neither cause weight loss or weight gain. Sure, you could slowly replace fat with muscle while in calorie balance from doing something like Metabolic Enhancement Training, and I hope to post about that next week, but for the most part your weight is unlikely to change much while in calorie balance.

Actually, I shouldn’t downplay what is at least physically possible. Since 6 pounds of muscle and 1 pound of fat contain the same amount of calories, theoretically you could lose 10 pounds of fat, gain 60 pounds of muscle, and increase your weight by 50 pounds without a calorie surplus. You’re not likely to do anything like this to such an extreme, but mathematically, it is possible. Likewise, you could lose 50 pounds while in calorie balance on the other side of that coin. I’m sure Arnold, during his heyday, could have easily achieved a 50-pound weight loss while in calorie balance by doing a prolonged juice fast and taking a break from the weights and the roids.

But assuming no change in muscle to fat ratio - when your appetite is satisfied on fewer calories than you burn metabolically you will lose weight. Likewise, when you need more calories to satisfy your appetite than your body burns you will gain weight. This can happen at high calorie intakes which is most typical, or low calorie intakes (if you have to average 1,600 calories per day to satisfy your hunger but your body refuses to burn more than 1,500 on average, you will gain weight – more than 10 pounds per year with such a disparity in the appetite to metabolism ratio).

Okay, so that’s outta the way. Let’s get going further with the Flavor-Calorie Theory.

First of all, forget Seth Roberts and what he calls the Flavor-Calorie Theory. What he is really talking about is Pleasure Center Activation Theory (PCAT) of weight set point.

Yeah, it was time to bust out a new acronym. PCAT is a sweet one, and it can also be referred to as “Poodie Tat.” Too many people were getting caught up on “flavor” and not focusing on the real meat of the theory, which is that reward centers in the human brain that guide us towards foods that have the most bang for the buck exert a powerful influence over our weight set point.

The primary pleasure center substance is called dopamine – or “dope,” and it be some good shit.

It’s really very useful. The “land of milk and honey” was not called the “land of lettuce and lentil sprouts” because lettuce and lentil sprouts don’t activate the pleasure centers in the brain to the same extent of milk and honey – which are without question the most calorie-dense, rapidly-ingested, rapidly-absorbed calories that can be consumed on God’s green earth without some form of refinement (including cooking). Remember that liquids activate pleasure centers more than solids (to a certain extent – once the diet is 100% liquid that is no longer true… monotony rules and it has the opposite effect).

But modern foodstuffs and substances exploit the pleasure centers and spike dopamine to levels that real food, no matter how calorie-dense or flavorful, is simply not capable of doing to the same degree.

In terms of promoting a rise in weight set point, which increases the appetite to metabolism ratio (AM Ratio – kinda like AM Radio), the most powerful promoters seem to be substances that are the most sweet. Saccharine, Aspartame, and Sucralose (Splenda) cause much greater increase in the AM Ratio than plain ol’ sugar. Of course, throwing caffeine into the mix activates those pleasure centers even more. Diet drinks are the perfect obesigenic substances when paired with a calorie-dense meal. Say what you want about Stevia, but that is another dime-a-dozen sweetener for raising your weight set point – it just comes without so much of the neurotoxicity of aspartame, or the bowel destruction of sucralose.

Anyway, I will continue to try to poke holes in PCAT like I have over the past several years after coming across the work of Seth Roberts, but as of now I have little doubt that the PCAT explains most cases of obesity – and by eating foods that trigger a smaller dopamine response one can easily become satisfied on fewer calories and lose weight without a revolt from the metabolism (drop in body temperature).

More reasons why I find the Pleasure Center Activation Theory to be so compelling:

1) Ethnic groups with a history of eating foods that are not very calorie dense, or without a long history of alcohol use (which spikes the hell out of dopamine) are naturally FAR more susceptible to obesity, diabetes, and alcoholism than Whitey, who has consumed milk, honey, grain, and alcohol in abundance for thousands of years – and has consumed refined sugar and grain longer than most other Ethnic groups.

This suggests to me that many various ethnic groups have much more highly-attuned dopamine receptors (although dopamine is just one pleasure neurotransmitter, serotonin could certainly be involved as well) – to have a more acute sense for calorie-dense and rapidly-absorbed calories for the purposes of survival. When encountering alcohol as well as foods that are more calorie dense, highly-sweetened, and rapidly-absorbed, such as is the case with the Nauru of the Pacific (above) and the Pima of Arizona (the two fattest, most diabetic peoples on earth) who saw their sparse, lean, fibrous diets replaced by tons of animal and vegetable fat, soft drinks, refined grain, packaged junk foods, and alcohol, a huge rise in weight set point struck a large percentage of the population.

2) Alcoholism is considered to have a very strong hereditary component. Obesity researchers know very little about what causes obesity, but they do know that the strongest correlation by far is heredity. In fact, twins that are separated at birth and live separate lives with different families and different diets and influences almost invariably end up at the exact same weight – and even store excess fat in the exact same place on their bodies. Neurotransmitter profiles are certainly hereditary, and would explain the connections between both alcoholism and heredity and obesity and heredity.

3) It seems after hearing hundreds of testimonials for both weight loss and weight gain following my advice to eat to appetite of a “high-everything” whole foods (slower absorption) no sugar (unsweet), low to no alcohol diet, that the prime determinant of whether a person loses weight or not can be directly linked to the degree of pleasure center activation of the diet they ate preceding RRARF. In other words, if they were eating to appetite of fast food, doughnuts, Pepsi or diet drinks, white bread, and beer and switched to a whole foods diet with no sugar or alcohol, there was typically an instant drop in weight set point – causing rapid weight loss and presumably a big decrease in calorie intake.

Those who were eating a calorie-restricted diet, a carbohydrate-restricted diet, an already unsweetened diet with no alcohol, a vegan diet, a raw foods diet, or any other version of a diet that provided LESS pleasure center activation, often GAINED weight eating to appetite on RRARF and had a sudden increase in appetite and calorie intake.  These people were the equivalent, basically, of ethnic groups that are highly sensitive to weight gain when switching from a low-calorie density diet with very little alcohol and sweetness to standard "Western" fare. 

To read more about this, please check out the FREE EBOOK HERE. 

Final Thoughts…

The PCAT is a similar theory to the Thrifty Gene Hypothesis, except that the abundance of food is not the reason our “biology that once insured survival has now turned against us.” Rather, it is the nature of that food, not the quantity of it, that has taken the biological mechanisms of those predisposed to fat gain and switched on the fat storage programs. I believe these same mechanisms underlie many forms of addiction.

Unfortunately, even if this is the undeniable way that most people gain excess body fat and run into metabolic disease, trying to lose body fat and reverse disease remains a tricky thing to solve that reeks of tail-chasing (the PCAT chasing its tail, not a dog). It is tail-chasing because simply eating whole foods that have low-calorie density, like Joel Fuhrman’s nutritarian diet for example, which by definition is all about eating foods with the lowest calorie-density, upregulates the pleasure center receptors even more. So it in no way enables a person to be able to eat the calorie-dense foods that the rest of society eats, and that everyone enjoys, without becoming increasingly sensitive to their fattening effects. But I guess the good news is that the more you eat low-dopamine triggering foods the more tasty they become (trust me, when your pleasure neurotransmitters are upregulated enough, even the blandest food on earth will taste incredible).

This scores yet another big point in favor of the fat loss strategies of guys like Martin Berkhan and Joel Marion – who punctuate plain, whole foods-centric weight loss diets with major Cheesecake and pizza slayings. Berkhan has also been known to spank some Heineys.

Could it be that this acute, infrequent, monster dopamine rush is enough to keep the dopamine and/or serotonin receptors from opening up? Could this enable your average 100-pounds overweight Joe to take advantage of low-calorie density foods that induce weight loss while still being able to eat Brie-bombed potatoes and Jambalaya without falling off the deep end once ideal weight has been achieved? I dunno. We’ll see I guess.