
Mark Schatzker
Author, "The End of Craving" | Writer-in-residence, Modern Diet and Physiology Research Center, Yale University
Mark Schatzker is a bestselling author, journalist and internationally recognized authority on the science of nutrition, pleasure and wellness. The writer-in-residence at the Modern Diet and Physiology Research Center, affiliated with Yale University, Schatzker’s refreshing and original explorations into food are informed by history, cultural observation and an obsessive depth of scientific knowledge. His writing has appeared in publications ranging from The New York Times to The Best American Travel Writing and Annual Review of Psychology.
In his latest book, The End of Craving, Schatzker delves into the science of overeating and discovers that nearly everything we have been taught about diet and body weight is wrong. Contrary to popular belief, humans are not “wired” to over-consume calories and store them as fat. The human brain, rather, possesses an exquisite intelligence when it comes to eating. It controls body weight with the same precision as it controls body temperature and heart rate.
Obesity, furthermore, is not characterized by an excess of pleasure or indulgence. As a detailed examination of modern neuroscience reveals, something is causing the brains of millions of people to crave too much food. Schatzker traces that cause not to carbohydrates or fat, but to additives that alter the sensory aspects of food, causing the brain to work harder to obtain its expected reward, which we experience as an unrelenting desire to eat.
Despite the grave statistics, Schatzker remains rousingly optimistic. He points to the example of northern Italians, who enjoy an outstandingly rich and delicious diet along with an astonishingly low rate of obesity. The simple experience of eating engages a complex biology and possesses a wisdom we are just beginning to understand. If the example of Italy tells us anything it is that food was not meant to be feared but to be enjoyed.
Schatzker’s career began with a dinner on a beach in Chile in 1997 when he asked an apparently simple question, Why does this steak taste so good? That lead to his first book, Steak, a rollicking narrative in which he not only travelled the world in search of the greatest piece of beef but began to ask questions that would shape his career. What foods should humans eat? How do animals know what to eat? What is the relationship between flavor and nutrition?
He addressed these questions head-on in his subsequent book, The Dorito Effect, which examines changes in food and diet through the lens of flavor. Like animals, humans possess nutritional wisdom, an in-built ability to seek out needed nutrients. Flavor, Schatzker shows, is the brain’s language of nutrition — a language no longer suited to the modern food environment. Thanks to high output agriculture, whole foods become ever more bland. Junk food, meanwhile, increasingly possesses the flavors that are being lost on the farm.
Schatzker’s writing on food has been called “illuminating and radical” by the New York Times Book Review; a writer with “wit, grace, and pace” (Bloomberg). Celebrated for his ability to make the most complex science clear and compelling. He has appeared on network television more than seventy-five time on shows that include CBS Good Morning, Good Morning America, and Bloomberg News.
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