Kaplods, thank you again for a great post. Knowledge IS power. I agree that this book was such an eye opener into human behavior.

meh, the boogeyman of the food industry doesn't float with me. Yes, they want to sell stuff. So do beer companies and fast cars and other stuff that if taken/eaten/driven/used to excess or recklessness can kill us. That's the price of living in a free society. The counterbalance of other, healthier information is more than fair IMO, it's all around us! There's not a magazine or newspaper that doesn't explain healthy eating options, books, TV shows, I'm bombarded with healthy options for living on a seemingly daily basis! But ultimately I"M responsible for me. There's no way I ever thought the crap I ate was healthy LOL or that I was duped into eating it. I KNEW those soft fluffy McCheeseburgers required little to no digestion on my part, they were already nicely smooshy for my ease of eating and enjoyment and I gobble'd 'em up like nobody's business LOL Yes, our brains have been hot-wired to eat fat/salt/sugar since back in the caves, but we've also evolved enough to say NO. No one made me fat but me. No moustache-twirling evil genius pointed a bacon ray-gun at me and blasted on 150 extra pounds, I can't blame anyone else.

My point is that the overladen food items are not specifically identified as having been 'enhanced'.

The beer labels have the alcohol content. Fast cars come with a brochure that reveals the potential for high speeds. The information is readily available and easily obtained. Not so with restaurants. All I want is the same for the food industry.

Yes, we must be on the same mailing lists. I would like to have the same bombardment on which restaurant foods are unhealthy and healthy. I would like to make a selection from the menu based on information not on my best guess on whether they used enhancers or not. Did the shrimp (a seemingly healthy option) I had the other night have some enhancement? That info should be readily available.
Let me decide if I want to consume that stuff rather than just using it willy-nilly and keeping it a secret.

Knowledge is power and I don't think there is enough accessible knowledge about restaurant foods. I want to know more.

I am not assigning blame except that restaurants are resistant to revealing the information.

Well, i've lost over 150 pounds by eating out at least once per week. I asked how things were prepared, if the waiter didn't know I got something else, usually a piece of steak and some salad. I can taste something and just KNOW it's got butter or some kind of yum added to it.

I mean, even if you think it's better to eat at home -- but wait, our TOMATOES are altered on a genetic level to not rot so fast, our milk has crap in it to keep it from going off so fast, there's danger behind every door.

I simply cringe at the idea of my old 300 plus pound self saying "it's the restaurant's fault i'm fat", the stereotypical fat girl trying to blame being double the size she's supposed to on someone else, it's too humiliating and makes me feel like I'm not taking responsibility for my own life and welfare. I just naturally ASSUME that food in a restaurant is made to taste as good as possible - which means extra salt and butter and anything else they can throw at it. So I suppose what I'm saying is that this book/ideas are no revelation to me, it's kind of a "WELL DUH" what did you think was going on? That's why i always pick the food that can't be messed with much.

My formative years were during the 60's and early 70's - a time of family -owned stores - bakery, butcher, corner pharmacy and Mom & Pop restaurants. I remember the short order cook used to splash water out of a glass onto the grill to create steam to melt the cheese for a burger - not that yellow greasy stuff they use now. They fed a real potato thru a slicer to make the strips to put in the fryer. There was no corporate sponsored research on how to make everything taste like 'more'. It was a simpler time.

I just naturally ASSUMED that food in restaurants was still wholesome - until there was a published report on what was going on.

And that's the problem - we both have had to make ASSUMPTIONS. I just want to KNOW.

If restaurant A lists a shrimp dish as 400 cal and 10 g of fat, and restaurant B lists a shrimp dish that is 350 cal and 7g of fat, I can figure they both added crap because my similar shrimp dish at home doesn't have that many cals and fat. But I can also decided to patronize the restaurant that offers the lower cal/fat dish. I can make an informed decision on which restaurant gets my business and my money.

Knowledge is power but money talks!

You do get that this is not what I am saying, right?

I don't see anyone (not even he author) saying that restaurants are to blame for obesity, so I'm a little stumped why that keeps coming up as an argument against the book.

As a nation, we do eat out more than ever before, and that isn't likely to change overnight (if at all). Learning what's in your food and why, shouldn't be seen as a fool's errand.

The author isn't saying "it's the restaurant's fault you're fat," and he isn't saying "never eat out," or "never eat yummy food," instead he's warning against unconscious eating - eating without realizing why you're eating. He warns against flavor and texture combinations that are so difficult to resist (not impossible, but difficult), that it may be worth avoiding altogether, or eating in circumstances that make overindulgence more difficult.

Reading the book, I never once thought "damned those restaurants, I should sue them for making me fat, it's all their fault."

I did think "Oh, this is why I always eat more than I intend to of certain foods." And those certain foods weren't all restaurant foods. One of my worst food adversaries is almond or butter toffee (what's under the chocolate of a Heath or Skor bar). The chocolate doesn't really add that much for me, so I often made my own at home - the ingredients - butter and brown sugar that's it.

I would never eat a stick of butter or a pound of brown sugar, but put the two together, boil for a while and cool on buttered foil to make a crunchy candy that melts in your mouth yet is also soft enough to chew without pulling out fillings, and I've got kriptonite.

I'm not fat because of butter toffee, but I am fat because of the cumulative effects of all of my kriptonite food. I didn't realize that I was making my battle with fat more difficult to win by assuming "a calorie is a calorie," taking that to mean that I could and should eat anything I want as long as I stop at 1500 calories (not realizing that in itself was the problem, with certain foods I find it nearly impossible to stop at any calorie limit. Changing the flavor profile, changes my ability to resist overeating).

It isn't about blaming anyone, it's about learning to recognize foods that are difficult to resist. It isn't even about always resisting them, it's about learning how to recognize properties in food that make resistance more difficult.

If I do have butter toffee now, I buy one piece at a candy store (the really good stuff). I don't buy half a dozen Heath Bars and toss them in the freezer (because if I do, they'll be gone in three or four days - or if it's PMS/TOM they'll be gone in one or two).

It's "common sense" only after you've learned it. I've always known that some foods are "trigger foods" for me, but I never really understood what all those trigger foods had in common. What did butter toffee and General Tso's chicken have in common? (turns out - salt/fat/sugar).

With more than 35 years of dieting under my belt, I should have made the connection, but I didn't. Seeing the research made me realize not only that the combination was kriptonite, it helped me recognize it in foods I haven't tried yet. I have a predictive tool, not only in restaurants, but also at the grocery store and at my own stove as well.

I don't get why anyone is making this about "blame the restaurant" or "blame Big Food."

It's not about blame, it's about knowledge. If you know what's in your food, and why, you can make better choices at the grocery store and the take out window.

Thanks for the link!