Food or Fiction?: The Truth About the Ultraprocessed Foods Making America Sick – Former FDA Commissioner Explains Metabolic Health, Obesity, and Weight

by David A. Kessler

The former FDA Commissioner and New York Times bestselling author explains why Americans suffer in unprecedented numbers from obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and other debilitating illnesses, and offers concrete solutions for reducing cardiovascular problems, keeping weight off, and curtailing chronic disease. Unprecedented numbers of us live with obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and other debilitating illnesses. The root cause is a once-revolutionary idea that seemed to offer so much promise but instead has become the cause of a global health processed foods. Over the past seventy-five years, a number of factors aligned to create a reality in which processed carbohydrates—in the form of appealing, ever-present food items from pizza to burritos to bagels—became our main food source. In Food or Fiction? , bestselling author and former FDA commissioner David A. Kessler, MD, explains how the quest to feed a nation resulted in a population that is increasingly suffering from obesity and chronic disease, and offers an urgently needed course correction. While changes to farming, production, and distribution revolutionized our lifestyles, it also impacted our health as our bodies quietly contended with the metabolic chaos caused by consuming rapidly absorbable starch. Slowly but surely, these effects accumulated and became disastrous, leading to the health crisis we face today. In Food or Fiction?, Dr. Kessler explains how eating refined grains such as wheat, corn, and rice leads to a cascade of hormonal and metabolic issues that make it very easy to gain weight and nearly impossible to lose it. Worse still, he argues, is that this excess weight is making us sick, laying the groundwork for a host of diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, cognitive decline, and a number of cancers. We can no longer afford to dismiss the consequences of eating food that is designed to be rapidly absorbed as sugar in our bodies. Food or Fiction? reveals in illuminating detail how we got to this critical turning point—and outlines a plan that allows us finally to regain control of our health.

320 pages, Paperback

Published May 7, 2024

About the author

(David Kessler is also the name of another author, a hospice expert who worked with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, although David A. Kessler did co-author a book on elder care.)

David Aaron Kessler is an American pediatrician, lawyer, author, and administrator (both academic and governmental). He was the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from November 8, 1990 to February 28, 1997, and has subsequently held administrative and academic posts at Yale and the University of California at San Francisco.

More information is available at Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book about "fast" carbs, how they came into the mainstream, what they do to your body and how you can be mindful to make decisions to eat slower carbs to improve your health.

I saw this book in the library and was intrigued. My takeaway was that fast carbs are highly processed food which, because of the processing, takes away most of the nutritional value of the food. Part of the reason why they are problematic is because oftentimes they are easy to chew and they get absorbed in the wrong part of intestines, making you hungrier sooner. Slow carbs are much chewier and more beneficial and end up getting absorbed in the second or third part of the intestines. The nutrients go where they're supposed to go and you stay fuller for longer. Fast carbs are more than just junk food, and a huge culprit is processed grain (ie, all purpose flour) and, really, most grains themselves. I'm not sure that I could give up all fast carbs and go to a slow carb or even a low carb diet, but I found it beneficial to think explicitly of this when I was reading the book and I did make different choices when eating and I think it would be beneficial to move in a slower-carb direction. I appreciated the sample meal plan in the back of the book that charted a week's worth of breakfasts/lunches/dinners that were fast/slow/low carb to see the differences between each.

[Jen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I may have read too many books on this particular subject, but I just found this book dry and boring. So many statistics and over wordy. I think there are better options if you’re looking for a book on why processed, fast carbs are bad for us.

[Carol Palmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book only took me one day to read, mainly because I skipped over a lot of information that I already knew. I was hoping to learn something new, but nothing new for me in this book.