In a book being published next week, the former Food and Drug Administration chief brings to consumers the disturbing conclusion of numerous brain studies: Some people really do have a harder time resisting bad foods. It's a new way of looking at the obesity epidemic that could help spur fledgling movements to reveal calories on restaurant menus or rein in portion sizes.

"The food industry has figured out what works. They know what drives people to keep on eating," Kessler tells The Associated Press. "It's the next great public health campaign, of changing how we view food, and the food industry has to be part of it."

He calls the culprits foods "layered and loaded" with combinations of fat, sugar and salt — and often so processed that you don't even have to chew much.

Overeaters must take responsibility, too, and basically retrain their brains to resist the lure, he cautions.

"I have suits in every size," Kessler writes in "The End of Overeating." But, "once you know what's driving your behavior, you can put steps into place" to change it....

...At issue is how the brain becomes primed by different stimuli. Neuroscientists increasingly report that fat-and-sugar combinations in particular light up the brain's dopamine pathway — its pleasure-sensing spot — the same pathway that conditions people to alcohol or drugs....

"You're not even aware you've learned this," says Dr. Nora Volkow, chief of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and a dopamine authority who has long studied similarities between drug addiction and obesity.

Ingredients

Instructions

• Toast chili powder and cumin in a medium skillet over medium heat until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add oil to skillet and heat; add onion and cook until tender, about 3 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 3 minutes. Add beef and cook until cooked through, about 5 minutes. Add tomato sauce and beans; cook 5 minutes more or until heated through. (Note: To turn up the heat, toss in some chopped chipotle peppers with the tomato sauce.)
   
• To assemble, fill each taco shell with 1/4 cup of beef mixture; top each with 1/2 tablespoon of sour cream and 1/2 teaspoon of cilantro. Yields 2 tacos per serving.

YOU want good food at a holiday cocktail party and you want to impress people? You don’t want a caterer, you refuse to heat up frozen food, and you want to show that your expertise extends beyond buying perfectly ripe hunks of cheese and juicy olives? Then think about doing some cooking.

Here is a collection of party foods that are as easy to eat as they are to make. Each can be produced in 20 minutes or less. Many can be served at room temperature. And none require a plate. (Few people can juggle plate, wineglass and fork successfully, let alone gracefully.)

• Via Balloon Juice, their positive reaction to Obama's economic speech on September 16. Not only did John Cole like the substance, but...
  

  You know, there are a lot of things about which I simply do not agree with Obama. But hot damn, it sure is nice listening to someone speak in full sentences, using complete and often complex thoughts and weaving those thoughts into broad and overarching themes. Compared to the stammering and stuttering gibberish from Bush the past eight years, and the staccato, machine-gun like bursts of incoherent aggression from McCain, and Obama is like a cool breeze on a hot summer day.



• We just came back from the West Windsor Environmental Fair. We picked up a bunch of free tote bags, I signed up for info on a new community garden, and we replaced our missing paper recycling bin. Oh yeah, and we shopped at the farmers' market! Productive!


• Have you seen these OBNOXIOUS pro-high fructose corn syrup commercials? Diet Blog points to one of the worst offenders. Oh yeah, "it's natural, it's made from corn!" Yeah, made from corn IN A LAB.


• The NY Times reports on a truly radical idea: people eating HEALTHY WHOLE FOOD and losing weight!
  

  ...consumers and nutritionists say they are seeing a shift toward “positive eating” — shunning deprivation diets and instead focusing on adding seasonal vegetables, nuts, berries and other healthful foods to their plates.

  Kudos, folks. Get to your local farmers' market, and skip the processed foods!


• Some alumni of The University of Georgia are smarter than others, according to this story from Bloomberg News. Basically UGA alumni had to donate a huge amount of money to the fitness program JUST to get on the LIST to buy tickets for the road game at Arizona State. A small subset of people figured out they could buy Arizona State SEASON tickets for only $99! So one guy bought the $99 season ticket, donated the rest of the games to local charities. He gets to see his football team, charities get to raffle off the other tickets. In economics, they call that a win-win!


• This is the website for a new fitness studio that's opened up near my office. I've read the website. I *still* don't know what they are talking about. But I'm sufficiently intrigued to check it out sometime.


• My favorite home for online photos, Smugmug, is finally selling their own holiday cards! I'm partial to this one. What do you think?


• Keith Olbermann reported on this story a while back, and Jonathan Turley gives the result: "Bush Administration Loses Major Case of Transgender Discrimination at Library of Congress"
  

  The Library of Congress has lost a major discrimination case brought by a former special forces commander. Diane Schroer (formerly David Schroer) was hired as a senior terrorism analyst, but then denied the position when he informed the Library of Congress that he intended to have a sex change operation. The opinion below is an important victory for transgender rights and a baffling decision by the Justice Department to defend such a clearly discriminatory act.
  
  The decision was handed down by U.S. District Court Judge James Robinson who held: “The evidence established that the Library was enthusiastic about hiring David Schroer — until she disclosed her transsexuality. The Library revoked the offer when it learned that a man named David intended to become, legally, culturally and physically, a woman named Diane. This was discrimination ‘because of … sex.’ “

  
  This administration has wasted the talents and resources of hundreds of qualified Americans willing to serve, just because they're the wrong sexual orientation or wrong gender. As Keith said in originally reporting this story, shouldn't we hire the most qualified people to help us fight terrorism, regardless of anything else?


• Events of this week have not made former Labor Secretary Robert Reich very happy:
  

  If you think the Bailout of All Bailouts (whose details will be worked out over the coming week) won't saddle American taxpayers with billions, if not trillions, of risky obligations, you don't know politics -- especially in an election year when members of Congress are eager to get home to campaign; when the incumbent lame-duck president (who was he?) has all but vanished, leaving his hapless Treasury Secretary, a former investment banker, to take the lead and the heat; when voters are in high anxiety over the economy and Wall Street is melting down; when the executives of every financial powerhouse in America have staked lots of money on campaigns in both parties and have indundated Washington with lobbyists.
  
  In other words, watch your wallets. The tab here could be very high. If everything goes extremely well, markets move upward, and the risky loans become far less risky, it's possible that taxpayers (that is, the Treasury) might actually make money. But if the bottom falls out, American taxpayers could be on the hook for trillions of dollars. What then? The federal debt soars. What then? Interest rates go out of sight. What then? Foreigners lend us less money. What then? We're cooked.



• This is a Baskin Robbins Heath Shake. It's 32 ounces, or about 4 cups. It has 2310 calories, 108 g of fat, 64 of which is saturated, and 266 g of sugar (that's over 9 ounces). If you have milk, soy, or tree nut allergies, or just want to LIVE TO SEE ANOTHER DAY, you might want to stay away!

Hunger lined up, quiet and orderly, in the summer heat of a Delaware County day.

Suburban women, many looking a decade older than their ages, awaited their turn to collect strawberries, bananas and bread being distributed by Philabundance, the hunger-relief agency, at a Delaware County Housing Authority building in Woodlyn.

Several of them, including Marisa Koerbel of Lower Merion, were there to plug the summer feeding gap - to find food for their children, who usually get free or reduced-price breakfasts and lunches in schools now closed for summer.

Hunger isn't just an empty plate on a Philly table.

It touches the suburbs, too. And the number of poor and working-poor families scrambling to find food outside Philadelphia is growing.

Although various suburban programs offer meals for youngsters in July and August, there are far fewer options than in Philadelphia, which has many more feeding sites.

"Look at him, he's underweight," Koerbel, 37, said, tilting her head toward her son, Tyler Sylvester, who completed fourth grade at Merion Elementary School. "There are days I can't feed him everything he needs. I feel embarrassed being on welfare in the high-dollar area where I live."

Tyler, 10, who gets free lunch at school, said he understands what's happening and feels bad. "She doesn't have much money," he said of his mother. "My best friend's dad works at Villanova. He makes lots of money and he has lots of food."

Koerbel said she gets no child support and is home to care for her two other children, ages 2 and 4. Shaking her head, she said, "It's hard being hungry on the Main Line...."

...The U.S. is wrestling with the worst food inflation in 17 years, and analysts expect new data due on Wednesday to show it’s getting worse. That’s putting the squeeze on poor families and forcing bakeries, bagel shops and delis to explain price increases to their customers.

U.S. food prices rose 4 percent in 2007, compared with an average 2.5 percent annual rise for the last 15 years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And the agency says 2008 could be worse, with a rise of as much as 4.5 percent.

Higher prices for food and energy are again expected to play a leading role in pushing the government’s consumer price index higher for March.

Analysts are forecasting that Wednesday’s Department of Labor report will show the Consumer Price Index rose at a 4 percent annual rate in the first three months of the year, up from last year’s overall rise of 2.8 percent.

For the U.S. poor, any increase in food costs sets up an either-or equation: Give something up to pay for food.

“I was talking to people who make $9 an hour, talking about how they might save $5 a week,” said Kathleen DiChiara, president and CEO of the Community FoodBank of New Jersey. “They really felt they couldn’t. That was before. Now, they have to.”

For some, that means adding an extra cup of water to their soup, watering down their milk, or giving their children soda because it’s cheaper than milk, DiChiara said.

• Well halo thar. How are you today?


• I bought one of them there fancy Sonicare plug-in toothbrushes. My dentist Dr. B says they're a waste of money, but I was tired of my $10 Crest Spinbrush running out of batteries. And Amazon had a sale, plus I had a $25 gift certificates, so I got it for a lot less. This Sonicare thing is a srs brush! It feels like you have a lit hummingbird in your mouth! It has a timer, it has three different sensitivity settings, two special "brushing programs," a timer to let you know when to move on to a different section of your mouth. And even a UV filter to specially clean them! (Although I'm not convinced it's not just a tiny blue lightbulb.) At any rate it's fun, and anything that will renew my pursuit of perfect dental hygiene is a Good Thing.


• But man, my teeth are not white. Shocking in someone who drinks at least two big cups of coffee a day. I would do those white strip things, but we had a friend who used those, and her teeth turned blue after drinking red wine! If my choices are off-white or blue, I'll stick with the one closest to Nature.


• We've hit another lull -- not LOL -- in remodeling. Nothing more can happen until the countertops are installed. And they're not coming to do that until this Monday, the 7th. So all has been quiet in the construction zone. I wish they could have at least hooked up the fridge and dishwasher. It would be nice to get rid of the old white fridge in our entryway, and I cherish the thought of machine washing dishes again.


• Georgie, the interior decorator, wasn't able to come over last night after all. Sick child, or sick sitter. Someone was sick. Anyway, we're meeting tomorrow night now.


• She's on the prowl now looking for a TV for us. We've told her that we don't want to decide on chairs until we get the TV hooked up, so we know how far Hubby will need to sit. I figure if it's another month until we can have people over -- with places for them to sit and to eat, you know, the little things -- then it's another month. Which would actually give me a chance to play with all the new appliances, learn their little quirks, and produce earthquakingly good eats.


• I ran a meeting yesterday and was a total bitch about keeping to the agenda, but it worked. We got sooooooo much done in an hour. And we even resolved an issue that'd been floating around since February! Yay for being a complete bitch!


• Hubby and I have decided we will attend my 15th (!!!!!) college reunion in early October. Unfortunately it's the first weekend of October, and past experience tells me there is no decent foliage in the Hudson Valley that early. I'm not much of a one for the rah-rah stuff. I just want to see folks from my class. So we're just going to drive Saturday morning, go to the party that night, then go home the next day.


• Hee, it's amazing to think that Hubby came with me to my 10th reunion too. I remember getting the invitation in March. Hubby & I had only been dating for a few weeks, and this was going to be in October. I decided I would make reservations at a nice B&B anyway. If we were still going out then, fantastic. If not, I would just go myself and enjoy it. I worried about inviting him for something so far in the future. I didn't want him to feel pressured or anything. Well, I had nothing to worry about. And we were living together by the time October rolled around anyway!


• This year, the reunion is 2 days after our 3rd wedding anniversary.


• So anyway, we still need a fall foliage weekend trip. I suggested yesterday to Hubby that perhaps we could go in September up to Maine or something. He likes that idea. Now I just have to find a place! Any suggestions will be cheerfully accepted.


• Speaking of days off, I just reserved my time off days before and after Thanksgiving this year. I'm cooking Thanksgiving, in the new kitchen! First Thanksgiving cooking evar. I've never done the whole thing before. But I feel with help from the Good Book -- Cook's Illustrated -- I can do it.


• Gotta get back to work!

“You still cook dinner every night?” a friend asked incredulously one day recently. We were talking on the phone, and she could hear me rummaging around in the kitchen.

“Sure,” I replied. “Why wouldn’t I?”

The answer, she told me, is that in many households, the pots and pans are all but retired with the emptying of the nest. The phrase “cutting the apron strings” turns out to have literal meaning. As soon as your children are out the door, you get rid of the apron.

No more countless supermarket runs — just the occasional small shopping trip. No more nightly grind of turning out balanced meals with protein, vegetables and a starch. No more scrubbing pots and pans. You trade all that for freedom.
And that’s the part that baffles me. Freedom from what? Eating tasty, home-cooked meals?

why I should lift weights? I mean, apart from all the reasons I intellectually already know: maintain lean mass, build strong bones, yadda yadda.

Because I just cannot care about lifting weights right now. I got on the treadmill for a while yesterday, and I think I will do some intervals on my exercise bike when I get home tonight, but getting up in the morning and going to lift weights... meh. Mega-meh.

And yes, if I'm going to go, I have to go in the mornings during the week. After work is just completely packed.