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Fast-food nation

New age gluttony is fed by ads, genes and chemistry

PHOTO: K.R. DEEPAK

EAT TO LIVE Fast food is one of the causes of obesity

"Glutton: One who digs his grave with his teeth."

— French proverb

Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins of Christendom, and it probably kills more than the other six combined. This is the age of the gastric bypass for the morbidly obese, when people have their stomachs stapled to thwart their insatiable appetite.

But gluttony is also an ancient phenomenon: a 25,000-year-old statue unearthed in Europe shows a corpulent woman that we would instantly diagnose as being morbidly obese. The pharaohs were fat. Roman Senators were grotesquely obese — Tertullian complained of the mass belching at Roman feasts, and thin Popes were rare. Even St. Thomas Aquinas, who warned against gluttony, was obese and loved his food.

But even the ancients acknowledged that gluttony was a problem. Hippocrates recognised that sudden death was more common in the obese than in the lean. The Spartans exiled the fat. In Dante's Inferno, gluttons occupy a lower circle than the lecherous. And the Catholic Church in the 6th Century censured excessive eating as immoral and a celebration of the flesh. Our secular disapproval of gluttony has its roots in health concerns.

But insatiable hunger may have a biological explanation. Mice with leptin genes knocked out grow up to be as big as guinea pigs: Human obesity has a more complex explanation, but the biological basis is undeniable.

Super-sizing of food portions inadvertently makes us gluttons: humans tend to eat to completion whatever is placed in front of them. The French eat meals containing many courses, but small portion sizes may be one reason why they are the leanest in Europe.

The sweeteners in many foods are fructose-based; some are many times sweeter than cane sugar. These sweeteners simply stun the brain into becoming addicted to the flavour. Modern packaged snacks depend on cheap industrial fat and sharp basic flavours — sweet, salt and sour, to induce brand loyalty that borders on addiction. Introduced to children at an early age, via unregulated advertising, these flavours set up a lifetime of food craving. The three-meals a day concept appears to be over. We have entered an era of constant nibbling, brought on by long work hours, stressful lives and the easy availability of readymade, calorie-dense foods. Averaged over a day, most of us are gluttons. And we are digging our graves with spoons!

RAJIV. M

— French proverb

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