Book review: The Hungry Brain: Outsmarting the Instincts That Make Us Overeat, by Stephan Guyenet.

Researchers who studied obesity in rats used to have trouble coaxing their rats to overeat. The obvious approaches (a high fat diet, or a high sugar diet) were annoyingly slow. Then they stumbled on the approach of feeding human junk food to the rats, and made much faster progress.

What makes something “junk food”? The best parts of this book help to answer this, although some ambiguity remains. It mostly boils down to palatability (is it yummier than what our ancestors evolved to expect? If so, it’s somewhat addictive) and caloric density.

Presumably designers of popular snack foods have more sophisticated explanations of what makes people obese, since that’s apparently identical to what they’re paid to optimize (with maybe a few exceptions, such as snacks that are marketed as healthy or ethical). Yet researchers who officially study obesity seem reluctant to learn from snack food experts. (Because they’re the enemy? Because they’re low status? Because they work for evil corporations? Your guess is likely as good as mine.)

Guyenet provides fairly convincing evidence that it’s simple to achieve a healthy weight while feeling full. (E.g. the 20 potatoes a day diet). To the extent that we need willpower, it’s to avoid buying convenient/addictive food, and to avoid restaurants.

My experience is that I need a moderate amount of willpower to follow Guyenet’s diet ideas, and that it would require large amount of willpower if I attended many social events involving food. But for full control over my weight, it seemed like I needed to supplement a decent diet with some form of intermittent fasting (e.g. alternate day calorie restriction); Guyenet says little about that.

Guyenet’s practical advice boils down to a few simple rules: eat whole foods that resemble what our ancestors ate; don’t have other “food” anywhere that you can quickly grab it; sleep well; exercise; avoid stress. That’s sufficiently similar to advice I’ve heard before that I’m confident The Hungry Brain won’t revolutionize many people’s understanding of obesity. But it’s got a pretty good ratio of wisdom to questionable advice, and I’m unaware of reasons to expect much more than that.

Guyenet talks a lot about neuroscience. That would make sense if readers wanted to learn how to fix obesity via brain surgery. The book suggests that, in the absence of ethical constraints, it might be relatively easy to cure obesity by brain surgery. Yet I doubt such a solution would become popular, even given optimistic assumptions about safety.

An alternate explanation is that Guyenet is showing off his knowledge of brains, in order to show that he’s smart enough to have trustworthy beliefs about diets. But that effect is likely small, due to competition among diet-mongers for comparable displays of smartness.

Or maybe he’s trying to combat dualism, in order to ridicule the “just use willpower” approach to diet? Whatever the reason is, the focus on neuroscience implies something unimpressive about the target audience.

You should read this book if you eat a fairly healthy diet but are still overweight. Otherwise, read Guyenet’s blog instead, for a wider variety of health advice.