End of Overeating - David Kessler

lust

If you want to read an amazing story about human frailty in front of excess food as has been commonly available in certain sections of humanity for many years then read a short story titled "The Three Fat Ladies of Antibes" written by W. Somerset Maugham and published in 1933. No, if you want to know about overeating then you should not be reading "End of Overeating" by David Kessler. On the other hand if crushing boredom is what you desire then go right ahead!

Mr. Kessler indeed has a keen eye for the obvious. Here are some of his very sharp observations...

  • Fat, salt and sugar are bad! (no!)
  • We love fat, salt and sugar (really?)
  • Overweight people eat more (no kidding!)
  • People eat more when more food is available to them (wow! really?)
  • The food industry wants us to eat more (you don't say!)
  • We cannot control our urge to eat and eat even though we know it is bad for us.(who would've guessed!)

Mr. Kessler writes chapter after chapter repeating the obvious and naming unnamed sources deep inside the evil food industry.  He talks about how bad today's restaurant food is. How bad meats are. How bad the center aisles in grocery stores are and so on. Everything that you already know. Everything that anyone interested in reading about food would already have read about 10 years ago if not sooner.

Oh, what a chore it was to read this book The only saving grace was that about a quarter of it was filled only with footnotes and other references which one can conveniently ignore. Also, Mr. Kessler helps by putting in large chapter names and leaving fair amount of space between each chapter (and he has like 50 of them). All of this one would think would make the book hurt less. However, no, even the few pages that he actually does manage to fill up are so utterly boring that it is impossible to deal with.

Not sure if this book would lead to an end of overeating but David Kessler can take pride that his book will certainly contribute to and end of reading, if not completely, then at least that of utterly unnecessary food books.