Another column on food? What more could be added to the zillions of words written on food each and every day? In one word: lots.

Food is celebrated by elaborate creations and warm reports of down-home recipes. It’s splashed across every sort of magazine cover at the check-out line, from lifestyle and nesting to fashion. Food advertising, food consumption, food descriptions, holy tamales! What’s more, food has left the kitchen and has invaded every corner of our lives. The workplace, the classroom, the movie theater, and even our cars. We can’t even take a vacation without running into a gauntlet of food outlets on our way to the airport gate.

This column will be a guide to the food adventure, but a guide of quite a different sort. Most Americans, and increasingly people in other countries, are deeply troubled about their relationship to food. We all know that two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese and that in 2008, the number of obese outweighed the overweight population in numbers as well as pounds. But how did this happen? How did we get lost in this food mess? And how can we get out of it?

Beyond the tidal wave of ineffective diet books that offer tons of promises with little results, no one is writing about a permanent, joyful solution to ending the food-related misery that has inflicted our culture. That is what this column is about. It’s not another advice column, but an exploration through the darkest, deepest jungle of food despair that comes out into the bright light of human triumph.

I’m here to help you recognize and deal with the ill-effects of eating refined foods. The latest research that I am involved with explores the addictive properties of eating, and the foods that trigger this behavior. As you read, you’ll learn about new research on the neurology of pleasurable eating and its similarity to drug addiction: the connection is simply staggering, yet unknown to the general public. My goal for this column is to fill some of that gap.

I hope you’ll join me each week as I highlight the latest research that pertains to food consumption, dieting, and weight loss. You’ll be learning a new way to navigate our food culture so that you can guiltlessly eat well and often, and not let food run your life.