Food Suspicions May Help Combat Obesity

As we head further into February, you may be finding it tougher to keep New Year's resolutions like dropping a few pounds or eating healthier foods. But it's challenging to stay on course and lose weight when you're surrounded by temptation.

Maybe on the way to the gym you pass a convenience store with chips and candy out front. Or while out for a nice meal you accidentally fill up on free bread. Or you go food shopping for milk and veggies but end up tossing in a pint of ice cream and box of cookies.

A new book, "A Big Fat Crisis: The Hidden Forces Behind The Obesity Epidemic — And How We Can End It," makes the argument that, in order for us to be healthier, we need to condition ourselves to view the current food environment with suspicion and distrust. WBUR's Sacha Pfeiffer gets details.

Carey Goldberg, co-host of WBUR's CommonHealth blog

Deborah Cohen, M.D., senior scientist at the RAND Corporation and author of "A Big Fat Crisis: The Hidden Forces Behind The Obesity Epidemic — And How We Can End It"

Commonhealth "(T)rying to have each person solve this problem on their own is doomed to failure, because the environment is so powerful and it affects us in ways that we can’t always recognize. Unless we can control the environment, we’re not going to be able to control ourselves very well."