“Those circuits are not unique to food,” Kessler said in a recent interview. “I can give you a drug that will affect your appetite and cool them down, but you’re going to have to give me back a number of IQ points.” He said he was not speaking rhetorically.
Instead, it’s going to take other parts of the brain — the consciously thinking parts — to get people to eat less and eat better, he believes. That’s what happened with smoking. But the demonization of tobacco companies and ostracism of smokers that were essential to that campaign won’t work with food, which is essential for life.
Nevertheless, Kessler believes, we can learn to think differently — about certain foods, portion sizes, about eating everywhere and anytime — and government has tools to help. The former FDA commissioner, who acknowledges in his book that sugar, fat and salt “held remarkable sway over my behavior” for much of his life, thinks regulation of food advertising to children is one.
“Speech that is linked to reinforcing stimuli, and is nothing more than a cue in the addiction process, should not be accorded the same weight as speech that is informational,” he said.
The First Amendment doesn’t protect yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater when there is no fire. Should it protect an advertisement for sugary cereal if the words lead to an unhealthy obsession with sweets? Kessler thinks it’s a question worth thinking about.
Will the tide turn?
There’s one other ingredient helpful to bending the curve of dangerous trends. It’s popular support for change, the sort of social action that has proven effective in the fight against AIDS.
Can this happen when the payoffs of the moment — “Let’s finish that bag of potato chips” and “I think I’ll skip the gym today” — are utterly different from the pain and suffering that often lies at the end of the road? Will people rise up to make themselves healthier and demand that their governments help them?
Some people think so.
“I am very, very optimistic about the creation of a social movement. The evidence is clear that it can be done,” said Sir George Alleyne, a physician who once headed the Pan American Health Organization and was a driving force behind this week’s U.N. meeting.
However, whether this will actually happen — and whether the tide of noncommunicable diseases can be turned back without it — is something that nobody can yet say.
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