Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions

by Michael Moss

In pointing to the mind, not the stomach, their report highlights an important truth about food. For any of us who struggle with eating—whether that takes the shape of obesity, anorexia, type 2 diabetes, or just the unsettled feeling that the drive-thru or the microwave oven has become a bigger part of our lives than we want it to be—the digestive tract is but a piece of the puzzle. There is another powerful part of our anatomy that moves faster than lightning and compels us to eat, even when doing so might cause us harm. As one bariatric patient explained, by way of rebuke: “They didn’t operate on my brain.”