Environmental triggers might play a role in Americans' overeating

Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times

Here's an interesting thought: What if you're not to blame for your weight problem?

What if the fault could be laid squarely at the feet of food manufacturers and marketers, grocery store managers, restaurant operators, food vendors -- the people who make food so visible, available and mouth-watering?

Several recent studies, papers and a popular weight-loss book argue that eating is an automatic behavior triggered by environmental cues that most people are unaware of -- or simply can't ignore. Think of the buttery smell of movie theater popcorn, the sight of glazed doughnuts glistening in the office conference room or the simple habit of picking up a whipped-cream-laden latte on the way to work.

To make Americans eat less and eat more healthily, researchers contend, the environment itself needs to be changed -- with laws regulating portion size, labeling or the places where food can be sold or eaten. That would be much easier, the researchers add, than overcoming human nature.

Other health experts say that view is too extreme. Individuals can exert control over their own environment and lose or maintain weight despite the temptation of venti lattes, super-sized French fries and all-you-can-eat pasta bowls, they say.

"The environment, I think, to a large extent explains the obesity epidemic," says Dr. Robert H. Eckel, a professor of medicine at the University of Colorado and past president of the American Heart Assn. "But should we change the environment to alter the obesity epidemic? And how much do we need to change it? Those are difficult questions. To blame it all on the environment is a mistake. There is individual responsibility."

To explain how so many people have become overweight, researchers start with the urge to eat.

Eating is an automatic behavior that has little to do with choice, willpower or even hunger, Cohen says. Her paper, with co-author Thomas Farley of Tulane University's Prevention Research Center, was published online last month in Preventing Chronic Disease, the peer-reviewed health journal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Cohen and Farley argue that automatic behaviors can be controlled, but only for a short time (the reason most diets ultimately fail). A more effective approach, they say, would be to decrease the accessibility, visibility and quantities of food people are exposed to, and the environmental cues that promote eating.

"Eating behaviors are like a lot of other lifestyle behaviors; you tend to repeat them, often in the same context, same location, with the same people, at the same time of day," Wood says. "When people repeat behaviors in that way, they become automatic. They are cued by the context and no longer involve decision-making."

The fact that food is everywhere in today's society is a problem, Cohen says, because people appear to be biologically configured to eat, eat, eat.

"People are designed to overeat," she says. "We have a mechanism to store extra calories when we are given too much to eat. When you increase portion sizes, whether someone is fat or thin, neurotic or not neurotic, we eat too much."

Changes can be also be profound if people focus on their immediate environment. As he points out: Families usually have a "nutrition gatekeeper" who, through shopping, cooking and serving food, controls about 73% of what everyone in the family eats.

Steve - to blame the weight issues of our country solely on environment is inaccurate. However, the environment has a lot to do with it. The way American lifestyle is designed emphasizes overeating and inactivity. For researchers to think that this will be altered so we do not have to think about our behavior is ludicrous. The simple fact that Big Food has such immense monetary and political influence will make this impossible.

Besides behavior modification and gaining knowledge of your individual nutritional needs, the almighty dollar will be the single most important determinant in how we alter our environment for the better. Big Food follows the money.