Is the typical American diet — heavy in fat, sugar, and salt — the same on the Canadian side of the border?

According to a new book by Dr. David A. Kessler, former Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the way Canadians eat isn’t great, but it’s not as bad as it is in the United States.

In “What a U.S. food expert learned at Tim Hortons and Swiss Chalet,” Macleans.ca reports that Kessler’s book, The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable North American Appetite (available in Canada at amazon.ca and in the U.S. — without the “North” in the title — at amazon.com):

…discusses how the food industry hijacked our brains with three substances humans find as seductive as sex—salt, sugar and fat—and how the desire for them has overthrown thousands of years of conditioning to create an unprecedented culture of overeating.

After doing research in Canada, eating at chains like Tim Hortons, Swiss Chalet, and Jack Astor’s, Kessler reported that “portion sizes were a trifle smaller than is typical in the United States and there was a homemade quality to most of the food.”

Still, he concluded, “one out of four Canadians is now obese, compared to one in three in the U.S. One-third of Canadians who were classified as normal weight a decade ago are now overweight.”

You can read more about Kessler’s north-of-the-border dining experiences at the website of his Canadian publisher, McClelland & Stewart.

There’s also an interesting profile of Kessler and his work in the Washington Post.

Photo ©Carolyn B. Heller