To Lead or Be Led? 4 The assumption of perpetual food abundance stepped in to replace it.
The pursuit of food that had honed our foresight had dulled. Our lives
no longer depended on it. Ready food availability became someone
else’s problem, not ours. The gift of food scarcity—to not take food for
granted—was squandered.
While we do not always learn from the past, we are always bound by
the future. Though the food-related decisions we make seldom carry
the immediate life-or-death consequences of an earlier era, they still live
on in the lives of those who follow us. This outlook is molded into our
trajectory as the human race. The best side of humanity points the way
forward when we first seek to understand, and then turn understanding
into knowledge. From knowledge comes wisdom that guides individual
actions. From individual actions emerge norms around acceptable
behavior that enable societies to flourish.
This modus operandi puts into practice what it means to lead and not
be led. At the core of the modern food system are individual behaviors,
which collectively shape our America. Early in researching this book,
I came across The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable
American Appetite, by Dr. David Kessler. After observing the growing
obesity epidemic and how people—including himself—struggle with
food and weight loss their entire lives, Kessler set out to uncover answers.
As he put it, “I have lost weight, gained it back, and lost it again—over
and over and over.” In short, succinct chapters, he detailed how the mod-
ern food system is designed to stimulate reward pathways in the brain,
conditioning people to crave more.
As I read each chapter, I anxiously awaited his recommenda-
tions. After all, Kessler was the commissioner of the Food and Drug
Administration in the 990 s, serving under both Republican and Demo-
cratic administrations. During his tenure, FDA undertook several high-
profile initiatives, including nutrition labeling of food, approval of AIDS
drugs, and regulation of the tobacco industry. Kessler was never shy
about pushing the boundaries of public health and marshaling all of
FDA’s powers in doing so.
In his last chapters, I expected specific strategies for quashing
powerful self-serving interest groups and redirecting government to
serve society’s collective interests. Instead, he emphasized how the
power of government is subservient to what people are no longer willing