NIH Advisory Committee -- Kelly Brownell's Rudd Center

• Obesity
• Research

During the last two days, I had the opportunity to be in meetings with Kelly Brownell of the Rudd Center at Yale. Kelly has devoted himself to obesity treatment research for decades, and the talk he presented was all about how people don't change their behavior, that over time intake of fruits and vegetables and exercise/week have stayed stable. He is interesting in changing the defaults so that people are not tempted. They don't have to decide not to eat something. It's just not available to them or at such an expense that they decide against it. There is no question in my mind that the industry advantage, that they have addictive foods to sell and set it in front of people every chance they get, poses a public health risk, and I'm hopeful that some kind of flat playing field for whole foods will begin to appear.

In the last 20 years, use of cigarettes, alcohol and recreational drugs has decreased and obesity rates, credit card debt and anti-depressant rates have gone up. Without acquiring the tools to process stress effectively, we will be so desperate to do something about the extraordinary expense of stress-related conditions that we will start locking up every substance with high addiction potential. What will be left out is a sense of freedom, that we can learn to soothe and comfort from within and create so much joy in our lives that we stop needing the various excesses. I don't think one can legislate or negotiate with cravings. They are red hot drives, survival instincts, and now we are learning how to erase the circuits that fuel them. Stay tuned in the next few years. As the "overcontrol" forces come forward, my hope is that there is another force, which is to go to the roots of problems rather than skimming the surface and forcing people to change. I hope there is a "freedom first" movement to rewire the brain so that not just one of the excesses fade, but all of them do.