The Hungry Brain

Outsmarting the Instincts 

that make us Overeat

by Stephan J. Guyenet, Ph.D.

Categories: Psychology, Nutrition, Science/Research

Content: 291 Pages

Chapters: 
1 The Fattest Man on the Island

2 The Selection Problem

3 The Chemistry of Seduction

4 The United States of Food Reward

5 The Economics of Eating

6 The Satiety Factor

7 The Hunger Neuron

8 Rhythms

9 Life in the Fast Lane

10 The Human-Computer

11 Outsmarting the Hungry Brain

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Throughout these chapters Stephan describes different studies, how they were conducted, 
came to conclusions, and what this tells us about how the brain works. The book is written with a focus 
(as the title suggests) and describes, how our brain reacts to foods and how our 
food environment has changed over the years.

My opinion: For those people that expect this book to be the solution to their overeating problem,

I am sorry but this book isn't it. Don't get me wrong if you know how to interpret the findings in the referenced studies you can fairly quickly make conclusions on what makes sense in your nutrition approach. But I will put it like this, the first clear tips I found while reading this book started at around page 168 and the only chapter with purposeful written down tips towards nutritional behavior is the last one Page 223 – 240. 
If you really want to read these pages, you would be better off just lending the book 
from somebody you know.

Also, people that are very sensitive and don't want to read about animals being experimented on should not read this book, it won't make you happy. (There are quite a lot of references to mice and rat studies in it).

Sometimes what I did not like about reading this book, was the many references towards the fact that humans are a hunter-gatherer species and we have historically always eaten a certain way, 
it has only changed in the last few years. I have to say in this book referring to hunter-gatherers 
and ancestors made sense, but it is just my personal preference and I don't like it too much.

What I did like was that it had noted at the bottom of each page explaining the context or word, 
even though I have to say that you don't have to read them understand the text. That may be because of 
the fact that, in my opinion, reading this book does not feel like reading a scientific book (in which you often have to jump around while reading and look up certain meanings or shortcuts to clearly understand the text) it reads itself more like a novel. 

Maybe because it is written in a certain way. It has a lot of backstories painting a picture of the life of the researchers and their studies or describing the day of a hunter and gatherer tribe. That made it an easy 
and relaxing read about our brain functions and hormones. 

Pages 241- 278 (Notes) are references to different studies, so if you wanted to look up the claims 
made in this book you could just do that (I did not, might do it sometimes).

All in all, I enjoyed reading this book, although I must say, I did not get any new practical applications out of it (someone new to this field would but they would not need to know the more advanced parts of how the brain works, that puts it in a weird spot). There are not that many people I would recommend this book to. I think the people that get the most use out of this book are a very specific group, unless you don't need any specific reason and just enjoy reading books, then go for it.

Best for: People who want an easy and fun read about some functions of the brain that are explained 
using studies, I would put it into a category of nice to have for people of the field 
(Nutritional Advisers/Coaches and so on).