Of course, the modern epidemic of overweight and obese adults didn’t spring up overnight — for many people, weight problems have their origins in childhood. Last year, Dr David S Ludwig, paediatrician and endocrinologist at Children’s Hospital in Boston, tackled the underpinnings of the nation’s weight problems in Ending the Food Fight: Guide Your Children to a Healthy Weight in a Fast Food/Fake Food World (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

Dr Ludwig’s approach emphasises on foods that are digested and absorbed more slowly than high glycemic foods — white bread, white rice, highly processed cereals and concentrated sugars — that cause a rapid rise in blood sugar and lead to a sugar-hormone that drives hunger.

But Dr Ludwig recognises that some foods that have a high glycemic index in the laboratory, like carrots, do not have a high glycemic effect in the body when consumed in normal amounts. Unlike most fast foods and highly processed foods, the meals and snacks recommended by Dr Ludwig are rich in non-starchy vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, minimally processed grains (like brown rice and steel-cut oats), wholesome fats like olive oil and avocado, and protein, including vegetable protein.

Dieting by instinct

A comprehensive approach to eating for effective weight control is offered in a book to be published next month by Workman, The Instinct Diet: Use Your Five Food Instincts to Lose Weight and Keep It Off, by Susan B Roberts and Betty Kelly Sargent.

Dr Roberts, a professor of nutrition and psychiatry, explains how natural hard-wired instincts to eat in response to hunger, availability, caloric density, familiarity and variety, which served us well in Palaeolithic times (and until the mid-20th century), have been compromised by changes in the kinds, amounts and constancy of foods in the modern world. These changes, in turn, undermine the ability of many people to maintain a normal weight.

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