The proliferation of fast food restaurants, convenience stores, and vending machines in virtually every corner of residential America has created a serious nutritional problem. “Snacking” – a harmless-sounding verb that deceptively implies something unobjectionable – has reached addictive proportions[i].

Frank Parsons had been dieting for what seemed to be his entire adult life. All this time he had been telling himself, “I’ve got to get rid of this fat,” and in his mind he had been imagining the fat melting away as he ate lettuce leaves and rice cakes. That is, he thought that way until his specialist, Dr. Jacob, gave him a dose of reality: Frank is stuck with the same fat cells he was born with,(1) and all the comfort eating he did in his teens actually caused his fat cells to expand so much that they split to produce more new fat cells. Even worse, fat cells cannot be removed by any diet currently available. For some lucky people, however, appropriate dieting will cause the fat cells to shrink.