NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Eat the World’s Most Delicious Foods—and Start Dropping Pounds Today! Discover thousands of shocking food truths to help flatten your belly fast—and get you on the path to better health!   NBC News health and wellness contributor Dave Zinczenko, author of the multimillion-copy bestselling Eat This, Not That! series, blows the lid off the bizarre, unnecessary, and shocking ingredients in many common brands, and shows you how making smart choices about the foods you love—including burgers, pizza, and chocolate—can help you lose weight, drop blood pressure, boost your immune system, and more.   Discover how you can EAT IT! to help . . .   BEAT IT! WEIGHT GAIN! IHOP’s Chicken and Spinach Salad has as many calories as 6 Klondike Bars! Good news: A similar salad at another restaurant will save you more than 1,200 calories!   BEAT IT! MOODINESS! Some dark chocolate brands contain polyphenols, the near-magical nutrients that improve learning and memory, boost mood, and lower stress levels.   BEAT IT! HIGH BLOOD SUGAR! Can you believe there’s oatmeal on the market with as much sugar per serving as 13 Hershey’s Kisses? Change your breakfast order and start taking control of your blood sugar levels today!   With Eat It to Beat It! , better living starts right now! Praise for Eat It to Beat It!   “David Zinczenko provocatively exposes what’s in our food, so grab a fork and start indulging your way back to health with his advice.” —Mehmet Oz, M.D.   “Dave Zinczenko’s investigations into the truth about our food make him one of the top nutrition experts in America. Eat It to Beat It! is an essential guidebook for anyone with an appetite for eating and living well.” —Travis Stork, M.D., co-host, The Doctors Advance praise for Eat It to Beat It!   “David Zinczenko provocatively exposes what’s in our food, so grab a fork and start indulging your way back to health with his advice.” —Mehmet Oz, M.D.   “Dave Zinczenko’s investigations into the truth about our food make him one of the top nutrition experts in America. Eat It to Beat It! is an essential guidebook for anyone with an appetite for eating and living well.” —Travis Stork, M.D., co-host, The Doctors David Zinczenko is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Zero Belly Diet, Zero Belly Cookbook, Zero Belly Smoothies, and Zero Belly Breakfasts, and the co-author of the Eat This, Not That! franchise (which has sold more than eight million copies worldwide) and the Abs Diet book series. He is a health and wellness contributor at NBC News and has appeared on Today, Good Morning America, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and Rachael Ray and is the award-winning former editor in chief of Men’s Health and editorial director of Women’s Health, Prevention, and Best Life magazines. Zinczenko is also the founder and chief executive of Galvanized Media, where he oversees a number of life-changing wellness brands. He lives in New York City. chapter 1 Here’s the dirty little secret the diet industry doesn’t want you to know: Losing weight is much easier than you think. I know, I know: If you’ve watched the afternoon talk shows or the late-night infomercials, visited a gym, or checked out a weight-loss website, then you’ve received thousands of messages about how you need to cut out fat, I mean carbs, I mean dairy, I mean gluten; about how you need to work out with Zumba, I mean Crossfit, I mean P90X, I mean Bowflex; about how you need to eat for your blood type, I mean pH level, I mean body composition, I mean astrological sign. Things have gotten so bizarre that there’s now a program called the K-E Diet in which you take in all your food through a tube going up your nose. All of this confusion is not helping. While exercise is great, in any form, weight loss is primarily a matter of eating food that’s good for you—and not too much of it. (And never up your nose.) And theoretically, that ought to be easy: When you cut 3,500 calories (or use them up with exercise) you lose a pound of weight. So, when your body is receiving the proper level of nutrients and the proper number of calories, in most cases your weight drops to its healthy, natural state and stays there. The more fit and active you are, the more calories you can take in and burn off. So what’s with all the craziness? Why are two out of every three Americas overweight or obese? Why does diabetes—once a condition of the wealthy and overfed—now eat up one in every five of our health care dollars? Why are so many of our toddlers ready to topple over? It’s primarily because the food we eat just isn’t good for us. And that’s why I believe this book is truly revolutionary. While calories are a critical part of any nutrition plan, they’re not the whole story. You can cut calories all you want and still find yourself eating a diet packed with sugar, salt, fat, and disease-causing additives that can play havoc with your weight an