Preview: Cloud Dance Festival @ Pleasance
Kinisi Dance Company
Trouble and Desire marks the return of Cloud Dance Festival for another year of new contemporary choreography and we can’t wait to see how will they follow their excellent end of year ‘best of’ showcase last December.
Slanjayvah Danza are back “by popular demand” with their beautiful duet “Blind Passion – Live Cut” and the exquisite Mavin Khoo appears on Saturday and Sunday with a new duet based on Romeo and Juliet. We can’t wait to see Rambert dancers, Jonathan Goddard and Gemma Nixon’s ‘Ladies and Gentlemen: how bored are you?’ as we anticipate being not bored at all by these fabulous performers.
Pleasance Islington is the venue for 26-28 March with 3 eclectic mixed bills of 19 dance companies, a smattering of dancers off those reality telly shows and others from around the world – including a rare trip to town for Welsh rep company, Ffin Dance – over one performance pick and mix of a weekend.
More info at www.cloud-dance-festival.org.uk Tickets £12.
Man Utd: The takeover maths
Now that the Red Knights have formally appointed Guy Dawson of Nomura to advise them on their plans to bid for Manchester United, there can be no doubt of their serious intent.
Dawson has been one of London’s most prominent corporate advisers for 25 years. And Nomura is Japan’s leading investment bank, by a margin.
So what will Dawson actually do?
Well his first priority is to interview the 50 odd wealthy individuals who’ve indicated to the Knights that they’d provide funds for a bid – to see if money really will follow mouth.
The sums required are not trivial.
Here’s the basic maths.
The Knights would probably leave the £500m of debt recently raised by Man Utd in the bond market in place – so long as bondholders can’t force them to repay (which is by no means certain).
But the Knights would want to buy out the so-called payment-in-kind notes, which is debt whose interest rate is currently an eye watering 14.25%, rising to a penal 16.25% in August.
Redeeming that debt would probably cost more than £230m.
Of course the Knights’ priority is to buy out the equity in the business held by the Glazer family.
The Glazers reportedly invested $495m of their own money into the business – equivalent at today’s exchange rate to £330m.
Since the Glazers aren’t forced sellers, they will presumably demand a hefty premium to what they paid before they even contemplate cashing in.
Let’s assume that they would think about dealing if offered a 50% uplift – which is not an outrageous gain on an investment held for five years.
That would mean the Knights would have to find £500m for them.
Rounding up, that implies that the Knights need to raise £750m in total, to buy out the Glazers and pay off the cripplingly expensive payment-in-kind debt.
Would that be a walk in the park?
Not exactly.
If in the end some 50 deep-pocketed Man Utd fans can be persuaded to stump up, each would have to provide £15m.
Which is quite a lot to pay for a lifetime season ticket.
If David Beckham were to follow up on last night’s sartorial gesture of support for the ousting of the Glazers with a cheque, he might not notice any serious shrinkage in his bank balance. But even in the City of London’s bonus-land, there aren’t that many football supporters keen to invest that kind of sum purely for the love of a club.
Of course it’s theoretically possible that Nomura will be able to demonstrate that there’s lots of money to be made from investing in Man Utd at an enterprise value of £1.25bn (which is the sum of the £750m take-out price and the bond debt).
However, the profitable upside is not conspicuous, given that Man Utd’s annual turnover is just £278m, or less than a quarter of the putative takeover valuation.
Hidden Florence
Most tourists head straight for the Uffizi, but Florence has dozens of smaller museums full of world-class art. The curator of the V&A’s new Renaissance galleries was our guide
Stendhal syndrome is a sickness known to afflict those of a sensitive nature who visit Florence. It’s named after the French author, who was left sick and dizzy by the vast amount of art he viewed on an 1817 visit to the city. There have since been many cases documented of visitors fainting in the face of Florence’s glories. Add in queuing for hours to get into museums such as the Uffizi and the Accademia, jostling for space once in and then peering over heads to catch a glimpse of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus or Michelangelo’s David, and a visit to Florence starts to look a little dangerous for the health.
Inspired by the opening of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s £30m Renaissance Galleries last November, I spent a day in Florence with the galleries’ chief curator, Peta Motture, who convinced me that there are many gems still to be discovered in Florence which illuminate not just the Renaissance but the history of art, all without the risk of fainting. We started at tourist central, Piazza del Duomo, now pedestrianised. But instead of joining the queues to climb Brunelleschi’s dome, we ducked into a smaller building, the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo (9 Piazza del Duomo, +39 055 230 2885, entry €6), where sculptures that once packed the Duomo and Baptistery are exhibited.
“Not many people come here,” Peta promised, “but all the most wonderful original art from the Duomo is here.”
Although just behind the Duomo, the museum was virtually empty. At the top of the monumental staircase stands Michelangelo’s radiant Pietà. It was intended for the artist’s own tomb until, Peta told me, he broke the arm and left leg of Christ in a fit of temper, dissatisfied with the stone. They were later restored – Peta pointed out the cracks, which are still visible. Another work, the beautifully mature figure of Nicodemus, is a self-portrait – Michelangelo himself looming above the other figures, his eyes downcast.
Peta led us upstairs to a gallery at the top where a rust-coloured figure stood alone in the centre of the room, shocking in its bedraggled emaciation. The polychrome wooden sculpture is not what one expects, either from Donatello, its sculptor, or in representations of Mary Magdalene. Hollow-eyed, wearing rags, her hands coming together in prayer, she is an intense figure, almost frightening. Peta explained that this sculpture embodies the dark mood that engulfed Florence at the end of the Renaissance. Savonarola was a hell-fire preacher who thought much Renaissance art was immoral. Donatello had come under his influence, and carved the Magdalene as a beggar, a pitiful figure whose past decadence is clear in the cadaverous lines of her repentant figure.
Emerging into the daylight, we headed for lunch. Teatro del Sale (Via dei Macci 111, +39 055 200 1492), is an intriguing mix of private members’ club, canteen and theatre. Buying an annual membership (€5) allowed us entry, then we paid just €15 to serve ourselves as much food and wine as we liked. After dinner (€30) in the evenings the room converts to a theatre, with entertainment ranging from tango to chamber orchestras.
After lunch, Peta suggested seeing some classic Donatellos, so we headed to what was once the city jail to see the bronze David that scandalised Renaissance Florence with its nudity. The crenellated walls and tower of the Bargello (Via del Proconsolo 4, +39 055 294883, €4) feel squeezed into the narrow streets of the centre. This is Florence’s oldest public building, begun in 1255, and it is said to be where condemned prisoners spent their last night. It is now one of the city’s loveliest museums, being to sculpture what the Uffizi is to painting, only without the queues. The Bargello is serene and quiet, giving plenty of room and time to digest the beauty of the works and the setting. The atmospheric courtyard is the setting for a permanent exhibition of sculptures by masters such as Michelangelo and Cellini, as well as Donatello. On the first floor, in a sweeping 14th-century hall, are some of Donatello’s finest works, including a youthful David in marble, as well as the aforementioned bronze David.
Leaving the Bargello, we wove our way past the shops selling leather in all colours of the rainbow, to a discreet little building near the Arno. A plaque announced it as The Horne Museum (Via de’ Benci 6, +39 055 2466406, €5), another secret Florentine gem. Herbert Percy Horne was a late-Victorian Englishman who came to Florence to study the Renaissance and filled his house with the sort of art that would have been seen in a home of the period. The collection boasts works by key artists such as Giotto, Filippo Lippi and Giambologna, as well as furniture and domestic objects from the period.
Over drinks that evening at the top of the Torre dei Consorti, now home to the Hotel Continentale’s Sky Bar, we discussed Stendhal syndrome, and how we had been spared any such cultural indigestion. We looked out at the river and the Ponte Vecchio on one side, and the illuminated towers of the Palazzo Vecchio and the Duomo on the other. It is easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer consistent beauty of Florence. But Peta had shown me that by concentrating on some of the quieter museums, you can still find yourself standing in front of a dazzling Michelangelo, almost totally alone.
More ways to avoid the tourists
Where to eat
Just 10 minutes east of the overcrowded Piazza del Duomo is the Sant’Ambrogio neighbourhood. There is a covered market for divine Tuscan cheeses and meats. Florentines stop at Cibrèo Caffè (Via Andrea del Verrocchio 5r, +39 0552345853) for a pre-lunch prosecco. Pizza may not be native to Tuscany – neither pizza nor pasta makes an appearance on Cibrèo’s strictly Tuscan menu – but still, competing for the title of best pizzeria is still taken seriously by Florentine restaurateurs compete seriously to be the best pizzeria. This corner is home to the Cibrèo empire – the internationally renowned restaurant where chef Fabio Picchi made his name serving traditional Tuscan dishes, as well as a trattoria, the café and Teatro del Sale (111 Via dei Macci; tel: 055 200 1492), a mix of private member’s club, canteen and theatre. Teatro is squarely aimed at locals, with a nominal membership fee (€5), then a set sum paid at the door for an all-you-can-eat breakfast, lunch or dinner. In the evening the €30 cover price includes not only the best food and wine in town but then converts to a theatre where entertainment can range from a tango show to a chamber orchestra. Antica Porta (via Senese 23, +39 055 220 527) is a buzzing pizzeria outside the Porta Romana on the south side of the river.
Da Ruggero (via Senese 89r, +39 055 220 542), run by the Colsi family for over 30 years, is a classic Florentine trattoria serving the usual Tuscan favourites. Book a table or be prepared to wait in the line that snakes out of the door.
Half an hour south, in the pretty village of San Casciano is Nello (via 4 Novembre 66, San Casciano in Val di Pesa, +39 055 820 163), an unpretentious restaurant with 70s décor but heavenly Tuscan specialities and wine cellar.
Those who really care about their gelato go to Gelateria Badiani (Viale dei Mille, 20r), famous for its Buontalenti flavour – named for the Renaissance architect Bernardo Buontalenti.
Gardens and walks
The centro storico’s towering stone palazzi and narrow alleys fill with tour groups. For verdant space head south of the Arno where the ochre and burnt umber facades are backed by sloping green hills dotted with cypress trees. Head to the Rose Garden (Via di San Salvatore al Monte), tucked behind a small gate en route to the Piazzale Michelangelo and open from May to July.
A truly secret garden also below the Piazzale Michelangelo (on the corner of Viale dei Colli) is the Giardino dell’Iris (open to the public 2-20 May only), which contains row upon row of irises, the city’s emblematic flower, in every imaginable shade.
For Florence’s prettiest “country” walk, take a sharp right out of San Miniato gate onto the Via di Belvedere and along the medieval wall verged with grassy banks dotted with wild flowers. Continue beyond the Forte di Belvedere into birdsong, olive groves and ordered tranquillity. The road leads through the village of Arcetri, with saffron and terracotta-coloured villas, stone walls with tumbles of honeysuckle and the charming church of San Leonardo – a mere 20-minute amble out of town.
• Meridiana (0871 222 9 319) flies from Gatwick to Florence from €59 one way. The Relais Santa Croce (+39 055 2342230), close to all the museums, has doubles from €250, room-only. Further information on the V&A at vam.ac.uk.
Pension tax changes are severely flawed and should be withdrawn
The Government’s pensions tax relief reforms for those on higher incomes are ill thought out, complex, costly to implement and will damage the pension prospects for those on middle and low incomes…
In a detailed response to the HM Treasury and HM Revenue & Customs consultation paper Implementing the restriction of pensions tax relief, the Association of Consulting Actuaries (ACA) has said that the policy is ‘seriously flawed’ with each attempt to try to make it fairer only increasing the complexity and adverse impact on pension schemes.
Whilst identifying ways in which some of the worst anomalies could be avoided in the response, the ACA has called for an evidence-based impact assessment of the real costs of the reforms -properly identifying how this hits the private sector, and the remaining defined benefit schemes in particular – few believe the consultation paper’s figures are at all realistic.
Commenting on the response, ACA Chairman, Keith Barton said:
"We understand the desire to raise additional revenues in the current climate and that those on higher incomes must accept they will bear a higher proportion of the tax take.
"However, the policy proposed, centred round an income threshold, is just about the most complex and inefficient way possible – it seems to have been dreamt up with scant regard to how arbitrary it will be as comparing one individual to another. Worse still, it seems almost to have been designed to do maximum damage to ongoing pension provision – in direct opposition to the Government’s stated policy of encouraging the retention of ‘quality’ schemes.
"The policy is intended to raise revenues from around 300,000 high earners, but in reality it will directly affect many more people, and will have the effect of reducing pension prospects for hundreds of thousands of employees on low and middle incomes as the closure of good schemes accelerates, as a consequence of the measures.
"Simply put, the policy – to use the politest descriptions – is dreadfully conceived, but stubbornly pursued, despite pretty well unanimous warnings from across the business and pensions world echoing our conclusions. Hasn’t enough damage been done to quality pensions? We can only hope an incoming Government after the General Election – of whatever political colour – will be sensible enough to look again at a simpler way of achieving the same end objective."
The ACA points out that the tax measure proposed breaches just about every aspect of the Canons of Taxation developed by Adam Smith to denote a ‘good tax’:
- Equitable: the tax is not equitable as similarly situated taxpayers will pay very different taxes (see examples in Note to Editors)
- Convenient: the tax is not readily and easily assessed, collected and administered - quite the opposite
- Certain: there is no consistency and stability in the prediction of taxpayers’ bills and the amount of revenue collected over time
- Economical: the compliance and administration of the tax will certainly not be minimal for the HMRC or employers, schemes and individuals (and the complexity means mistakes will be rife).
Commenting on the detail of the response, Karen Goldschmidt, Chairman of the ACA Pensions Taxation Committee said:
"We have been told that the Government will not change course, which is desperately concerning given the anomalies and substantial administration that will flow from implementation. Our detailed response identifies and seeks to resolve the anomalies that we can, but, whatever we propose, implementation will be seriously flawed unless the policy is totally re-thought.
"As just one example, we site in our response where with just a one pound difference in ‘income’, individuals could experience a tax charge varying from nil through to over £13,000.
"Already, we have seen employers proposing withdrawing pensions as an element of pay package for salaries well below the £130,000 income threshold because of the risk that granting some normal element of income (or indeed some personal income) or a quirk of the way pension is valued could trigger this super-tax.
"And separately, we have noted how, unless properly carved out, redundancy payments could inadvertently cause a large tax charge for middle income employees, at just about the worst time possible, when an individual loses their job. And, be warned, senior directors too. You may pay thousands in extra tax based on what your DB pension is assessed to be worth only to find in, say, ten years time your scheme enters the PPF – you could then lose most of your pension because of capping and receive no tax rebate at all! Of course, senior civil servants and Cabinet Ministers won’t have the same worry.
"We are 13 months off the date after which making pension savings could trigger the new tax. The detailed drafting of the legislation has barely begun.
"In such circumstances, it cannot be surprising so many employers are turning away from pension provision.
"We are aware of the NAPF’s proposals that Government instead should slash the amount of pension savings that can get full tax relief, from £245,000 a year (introduced as recently as 2006) to £45,000-£60,000 a year. This would be a transparent mechanism and would directly withdraw relief from very high levels of pension savings. It would avoid the complex income test with its arbitrary outcomes, and mean continued engagement of management in pension provision. The complexity, administration and cost of running such a system should not be underestimated – but this is an approach that that should be seriously considered."
Copies of the full ACA response are available from the ACA (call 020 3207 9380) or can be viewed at the ACA website at www.aca.org.uk see ‘Recent Publications’.
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View the Olympic Site from the View Tube
It’s been covered brilliantly months ago on other London blogs but it always takes your author a while to catch up, so today’s idea is the View Tube, overlooking the Olympic site.
In typical Olympics fashion, the largely-empty expensive-looking website can’t just say it’s a cafe with a nice view of the building site, it has to be ‘a social enterprise and community venue located on The Greenway adjacent to the Olympic Park’, but your author is pretty sure it was mainly a cafe with a nice view when he popped by on Sunday. Made from bright green recycled shipping containers, it’s a partnership project between Leaside Regeneration, London Thames Gateway Development Corporation, the Olympic Delivery Authority and Thames Water.
Whilst the website is plastered with words like ‘events’, ‘create’, ‘learn’ and other meaningless terms, there doesn’t seem to be a huge amount to do other than drink tea and look at the view, but it does seem that you might be able to hire a bike for about a fiver and from here you can ride for absolutely miles along the Greenway (to Beckton) or along the Lee Valley, which sounds like great fun, and it’s a sport. Oh, and also there is a cafe with a nice view of the Olympic site there.
The View is open daily from 9am until 5pm, for more, see http://www.theviewtube.co.uk/
High Speed Rail Plans Announced
Lord Adonis announced the government’s proposals for a new High Speed rail link between London and the North this morning; a £30bn project that would bring Birmingham, Manchester and Yorkshire within less than 90 minutes of the capital in a Y-shaped network, splitting at Birmingham.
There’s an interchange with Crossrail near Heathrow planned, allowing travellers easy access to the airport and nearly halving the current journey time between, say, Leeds and Canary Wharf. The other big implication for London is a wholescale rebuilding of Euston: 10 high speed platforms and 14 ‘normal’ platforms all below ground level will involve expansion west and south – which answers our question of where to find 6 spare acres – all of which would hopefully be achieved without having to open a temporary station (à la St Pancras) or long closures.
We’re so bloody excited about this we hate to mention that none of it’s set in stone yet. The London to Birmingham route won’t get the go ahead (if consultation goes well) until next year, and work won’t even start until after Crossrail’s finished. Still: meet you at the Bull Ring in 2026, eh?
Why we can’t stop overeating
Our favourite foods are making us fat, yet we can’t resist, because eating them is changing our minds as well as bodies
For years I wondered why I was fat. I lost weight, gained it back, and lost it again – over and over and over. I owned suits in every size. As a former commissioner of the FDA (the US Food and Drug Administration), surely I should have the answer to my problems. Yet food held remarkable sway over my behaviour.
The latest science seemed to suggest being overweight was my destiny. I was fat because my body’s “thermostat” was set high. If I lost weight, my body would try to get it back, slowing down my metabolism till I returned to my predetermined set point.
But this theory didn’t explain why so many people, in the US and UK in particular, were getting significantly fatter. For thousands of years, human body weight had stayed remarkably stable. Millions of calories passed through our bodies, yet with rare exceptions our weight neither rose nor fell. A perfect biological system seemed to be at work. Then, in the 80s, something changed.
Three decades ago, fewer than one Briton in 10 was obese. One in four is today. It is projected that by 2050, Britain could be a “mainly obese society”. Similar, and even more pronounced, changes were taking place in the US, where researchers found that not only were Americans entering their adult years at a significantly higher weight but, while on average everyone was getting heavier, the heaviest people were gaining disproportionately more weight than others. The spread between those at the upper end of the weight curve and those at the lower end was widening. Overweight people were becoming more overweight.
What had happened to add so many millions of pounds to so many millions of people? Certainly food had become more readily available, with larger portion sizes, more chain restaurants and a culture that promotes out-of-home eating. But having food available doesn’t mean we have to eat it. What has been driving us to overeat?
It is certainly not a want born of fear of food shortages. Nor is it a want rooted in hunger or the love of exceptional food. We know, too, that overeating is not the sole province of those who are overweight. Even people who remain slim often feel embattled by their drive for food. It takes serious restraint to resist an almost overpowering urge to eat. Yet many, including doctors and healthcare professionals, still think that weight gainers merely lack willpower, or perhaps self-esteem. Few have recognised the distinctive pattern of overeating that has become widespread in the population. No one has seen loss of control as its most defining characteristic.
“Higher sugar, fat and salt make you want to eat more.” I had read this in scientific literature, and heard it in conversations with neuroscientists and psychologists. But here was a leading food designer, a Henry Ford of mass-produced food, revealing how his industry operates. To protect his business, he did not want to be identified, but he was remarkably candid, explaining how the food industry creates dishes to hit what he called the “three points of the compass”.
Sugar, fat and salt make a food compelling. They stimulate neurons, cells that trigger the brain’s reward system and release dopamine, a chemical that motivates our behaviour and makes us want to eat more. Many of us have what’s called a “bliss point”, at which we get the greatest pleasure from sugar, fat or salt. Combined in the right way, they make a product indulgent, high in “hedonic value”.
During the past two decades, there has been an explosion in our ability to access and afford what scientists call highly “palatable” foods. By palatability, they don’t just mean it tastes good: they are referring primarily to its capacity to stimulate the appetite. Restaurants sit at the epicentre of this explosion, along with an ever-expanding range of dishes that hit these three compass points. Sugar, fat and salt are either loaded into a core ingredient (such as meat, vegetables, potato or bread), layered on top of it, or both. Deep-fried tortilla chips are an example of loading – the fat is contained in the chip itself. When it is smothered in cheese, sour cream and sauce, that’s layering.
It is not just that fast food chains serve food with more fat, sugar and salt, or that intensive processing virtually eliminates our need to chew before swallowing, or that snacks are now available at any time. It is the combination of all that, and more.
Take Kentucky Fried Chicken. My source called it “a premier example” of putting more fat on our plate. KFC’s approach to battering its food results in “an optimised fat pick-up system”. With its flour, salt, MSG, maltodextrin, sugar, corn syrup and spice, the fried coating imparts flavour that touches on all three points of the compass while giving the consumer the perception of a bargain – a big plate of food at a good price.
Initially, KFC meals were built around a whole chicken, with a pick-up surface that contained “an enormous amount of breading, crispiness and brownness on the surface. That makes the chicken look like more and gives it this wonderful oily flavour.” Over time, the company began to realise there was less meat in a chicken nugget compared with a whole chicken, and a greater percentage of fried batter. But the real breakthrough was popcorn chicken. “The smaller the piece of meat, the greater the percentage of fat pick-up,” said the food designer. “Now, we have lots of pieces of a cheaper part of the chicken.” The product has been “optimised on every dimension”, with the fat, sugar and salt combining with the perception of good value virtually to guarantee consumer appeal.
He walked me through some offerings at other popular food chains. Burger King’s Whopper touched on the three points of the compass – then was altered for further effect. In its first, stripped-down form, the burger was explosively rich in fat, sugar and salt. Then the chain began adding more beef, extra cheese or a layer of bacon. McDonald’s broke new ground in another way – by making food available on a whim. “The great growth has been the snacking occasion. You get hungry, you want something, your mind pushes off the reality of what you ought to eat, and you end up picking up a hamburger and a giant soda or french fries.”
Next they introduced a high-fat, high-salt morning meal. “They took what they learned from the core lunch and dinner menu, and applied it to breakfast. The sausage McMuffin and the egg McMuffin are stand-ins for the hamburger. In effect, you are eating a morning hamburger.”
This kind of food disappears down our throats so quickly after the first bite that it readily overrides the body’s signals that should tell us, “I’m full.” The food designer offered coleslaw as an example. When its ingredients are chopped roughly, it requires time and energy to chew. But when cabbage and carrots are softened in a high-fat dressing, coleslaw ceases to be “something with a lot of innate ability to satisfy”.
This isn’t to say that the food industry wants us to stop chewing altogether. It knows we want to eat a doughnut, not drink it. “The key is to create foods with just enough chew – but not too much. When you’re eating these things, you’ve had 500, 600, 800, 900 calories before you know it.” Foods that slip down don’t leave us with a sense of being well fed. In making food disappear so swiftly, fat and sugar only leave us wanting more.
According to food consultant Gail Vance Civille, of management consultants Sensory Spectrum, fat is crucial to this process of lubrication, ensuring that a product melts in the mouth. In the past, she says, Americans typically chewed food up to 25 times before it was swallowed; now the average American chews 10 times. “If I have fat in there, I just chew it up and whoosh! Away it goes,” she says. “You have a ‘quick getaway’, a quick melt.”
The Snickers bar, Civille says, is “extraordinarily well engineered”. Unlike many products whose nuts become annoyingly lodged between your teeth, the genius of Snickers is that as we chew, the sugar dissolves, the fat melts and the caramel picks up the peanut pieces, so the entire candy is carried out of the mouth at the same time. “You’re not getting a build-up of stuff in your mouth.”
Kettle chips are another success story. Made of sugar-rich russet potatoes, they have a slightly bitter background note and brown irregularly, which gives them a complex flavour. High levels of fat generate easy mouth-melt, and surface variations add a level of interest beyond that found in mass-produced chips. Heightened complexity is the key to modern food design.
Not so many decades ago, a single flavour of ice-cream was a special treat. Our options ran to vanilla, chocolate and strawberry – and when we could buy all three in a single carton, we saw that as a great innovation. Now ice-cream has countless flavours and varieties; it comes mixed with M&M’s or topped with caramel sauce.
When layers of complexity are built into food, the effect becomes more powerful. Sweetness alone does not account for the full impact of a fizzy drink – its temperature and tingle, resulting from the stimulation of the trigeminal nerve by carbonation and acid, are essential contributors as well.
“The complexity of the stimulus increases its association to a reward,” says Gaetano Di Chiara, an expert in neuroscience and pharmacology at the University of Cagliari in Italy. Elements of that complexity include tastes that are familiar and well liked, especially if not always readily available, and the learning associated with having had a pleasurable experience with the same food in the past.
Take a bowl of M&M’s. If I’ve eaten them in the past, I’m stimulated by the sight of them, because I know they’ll be rewarding. I eat one, and experience that reward. The visual cue gains power and stimulates the urge we call “wanting”. The more potent and complex foods become, the greater the rewards they may offer. The excitement in the brain increases our desire for further stimulation.
In theory there’s a limit to how much stimulation rewarding foods can generate. We are supposed to habituate – to neuroadapt. When Di Chiara gave animals a cheesy snack called Fonzies, the levels of dopamine in their brains increased. Over time, habituation set in, dopamine levels fell and the food lost its capacity to activate their behaviour.
But if the stimulus is powerful enough, novel enough or administered intermittently enough, the brain may not curb its dopamine response. Desire remains high. We see this with cocaine use, which does not result in habituation. Hyperpalatable foods alter the landscape of the brain in much the same way.
I asked Di Chiara to study what happens after an animal is repeatedly exposed to a high-sugar, high-fat chocolate drink. When he’d completed his experiment, he sent me an email with “Important results!!!!” in the subject line. He had shown that dopamine response did not diminish over time with the chocolate drink. There was no habituation.
Novelty also impedes habituation, and intermittency is another driver. Give an animal enough sugar-laden food, withdraw it for the right amount of time, then provide it again in sufficient quantities, and dopamine levels may not diminish.
There’s still a lot we don’t know about the relationship between the dopamine-driven motivational system and our behaviour in the presence of rewarding foods. But we do know that foods high in sugar, fat and salt are altering the biological circuitry of our brains. We have scientific techniques that demonstrate how these foods – and the cues associated with them – change the connections between the neural circuits and their response patterns.
Rewarding foods are rewiring our brains. As they do, we become more sensitive to the cues that lead us to anticipate the reward. In that circularity lies a trap: we can no longer control our responses to highly palatable foods because our brains have been changed by the foods we eat.
I wanted to know how much the industry understood about how the food we eat affects us; about what I have termed “conditioned hypereating” – “conditioned” because it becomes an automatic response to widely available food, “hyper” because the eating is excessive and hard to control. I turned to Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics.
“Does the industry know that what it feeds us gets us to eat more?” I asked.
“The industry has jacked up what works for it,” Stiglitz said. “The learning is evolutionary.” Practical experience has been its guide – it does not need lab rats when it can try out its ideas on humans. Its decision-makers do not have to analyse human brain circuitry to discover what sells.
A venture capitalist who knows the business intimately cited Starbucks as a company that has recognised and responded brilliantly to a cultural need. The caffeine and sugar in the coffee, with their energising effects, are certainly part of the equation, but the chain also offers something much more primal. “It’s about warm milk and a bottle,” he says. “One of my colleagues said, ‘If I could put a nipple on it, I’d be a multimillionaire’.”
But it was thinking creatively about how to attract more consumers that led Starbucks to the Frappuccino, the venture capitalist told me. Although its stores were crowded early in the day, by afternoon “they were so empty you could roll a bowling ball through them”. The creation of a rich, sweet and comforting milkshake-like concoction utterly transformed the business. A Starbucks Strawberries & Crème Frappuccino comes with whipped cream and 18 teaspoons of sugar: all in all, this “drink” contains more calories than a personal-size pepperoni pizza, and more sweetness than six scoops of ice-cream. By encouraging us to consider any occasion for food an opportunity for pleasure and reward, the industry invites us to indulge a lot more often.
Starbucks learned a basic lesson: make enticing food easily and constantly available, keep it novel, and people will keep coming back for more. With food available in almost any setting, “the number of cues, the number of opportunities” to eat have increased, while the barriers to consumption have fallen, says David Mela, senior scientist of weight management at the Unilever Health Institute. “The environmental stimulus has changed.”
Of course, when food is offered to us, we’re not obliged to eat it. When it’s on the menu, we don’t have to order it. But this takes more than willpower. As an individual, you can practise eating the food you want in a controlled way. As a society, we can identify the forces that drive overeating and find ways to diminish their power. That’s what happened with the tobacco industry: attitudes to smoking shifted. Similar changes could be brought about in our attitudes to food – by making it mandatory for restaurants to list calorie counts on their menus; by clear labelling on food products; by monitoring food marketing. But until then few of us are immune to the ubiquitous presence of food, the incessant marketing and the cultural assumption that it’s acceptable to eat anywhere, at any time.
Call it the “taco chip challenge” – the challenge of controlled eating in the face of constant food availability. “Forty years ago, you might face the social equivalent of that taco chip challenge once a month. Now you face it every single day,” Mela said. “Every single day and every single place you go, those foods are there, those foods are cheap, those foods are readily available for you to engage in. There is constant, constant opportunity.”
How to take back control
Plan when and what you will eat There should be no room for deviation; the idea is to inhibit mindless eating and eliminate your mental tug-of-war. Once you’ve set new patterns, you can become more flexible.
Practise portion control Eat half your usual meal; see how you feel one and two hours later. A just-right meal will keep away hunger for four hours.
List the foods and situations you can’t control Cut out those foods; limit exposure to those situations. If offered something you overeat, push it away.
Talk down your urges Learn responses to involuntary thoughts: eating that will only satisfy me temporarily; eating this will make me feel trapped; I’ll be happier and weigh less if I don’t eat this.
Rehearse making the right choices Before entering a restaurant, imagine chosing a dinner that’s part of your eating plan. Think of this as a game against a powerful opponent. You won’t win every encounter, but with practice you can get a lot better.
• This is an edited extract from The End Of Overeating: Taking Control Of Our Insatiable Appetite, by David A Kessler, published by Penguin on 1 April at £9.99. To order a copy with free UK p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop.