The Man Who Couldn't Stop Eating Summary and Analysis

In "The Man Who Couldn't Stop Eating," Gawande discusses the case of a man who seemingly could not stop eating—to the point of weighing more than 400 pounds and needing gastric bypass surgery. For Vincent Caselli, eating was not inspired by hunger, but out of habit, and because of the immediate gratification that came with it. According to Gawande, Caselli's behavior is not unusual. Research has repeatedly shown that humans are increasingly bad at eating only what they need and resisting the abundance that surrounds us in modern times.

Rarely is an overactive appetite the result of an identifiable genetic disorder, such as in Prader-Willi syndrome, a disease affecting the hypothalamus and causing insatiable hunger. Rather, humans are subject to the "fat paradox," a phenomenon in which fat intake induces...