Your Food Is Fooling You

February 15, 2013
Grades 8-12 Pediatrician and former USFDA commissioner Kessler has some bleak information for teens about what they eat and the food industry's role in America's overeating problem. As is often the case with self-help titles, this adaptation of Kessler's adult title The End of Overeating (2009) features evidence more anecdotal than scientific, as Kessler cites friends, a woman he saw on a talk show, and a couple of studies featuring rats and Froot Loops, without really citing cold, hard data. But his scared-straight tactics are effective. Readers will reflect on their own eating histories and recognize some familiarity with the descriptions of industry-standard, presoftened, melt-in-your-mouth foodstuffs, which inevitably contain enough calories to choke our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Kessler reponds with a dietary method that doesn't promise a quick fix but instead offers some consoling advice on how to kick an overeating habit. Also suggest The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Secrets behind What You Eat (2009), which Chevat cowrote with Michael Pollan.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)