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Fast Carbs, Slow Carbs: The Simple Truth About Food, Weight, and Disease
By David Kessler, M.D. '73, P'04, '07
The American body is in trouble. Unprecedented numbers of us suffer from 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 crisis: processed foods. Over the past seventy-five years, a number of factors aligned to create a reality in which processed carbohydrates became our main food source.
In Fast Carbs, Slow Carbs, bestselling author and former FDA Commissioner David A. Kessler explains how the quest to feed a nation resulted in a population that is increasingly suffering from obesity and chronic disease and offers a solution for changing course. Kessler illustrates 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, and discusses the links between excess weight and diabetes, heart disease, cognitive decline, and a host 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. Informed by cutting-edge research as well as Dr. Kessler’s own personal quest to manage his weight, Fast Carbs, Slow Carbs reveals in illuminating detail how we got to this critical turning point in our health as a nation—and outlines a plan for eliminating heart disease, allowing us to, finally, regain control of our health.