Former FDA Head Says Food Manufacturers Use Sugar, Salt, And Fat To Short Circuit The Brain's Reward System
Do you have trouble resisting the urge to scarf down that cookie/candy bar/entree? Maybe it's because somewhere upstream, experts spent lots of time and money manipulating the ingredients to deliver the consumer to a "bliss point," suggests former FDA head Dr. David A. Kessler. His book "The End of Overeating" looks at how modern food has been designed to be as irresistible and satisfying as possible.
Dr. Kessler isn't convinced that food makers fully understand the neuroscience of the forces they have unleashed, but food companies certainly understand human behavior, taste preferences and desire. In fact, he offers descriptions of how restaurants and food makers manipulate ingredients to reach the aptly named "bliss point." Foods that contain too little or too much sugar, fat or salt are either bland or overwhelming. But food scientists work hard to reach the precise point at which we derive the greatest pleasure from fat, sugar and salt.
The result is that chain restaurants like Chili's cook up "hyper-palatable food that requires little chewing and goes down easily," he notes. And Dr. Kessler reports that the Snickers bar, for instance, is "extraordinarily well engineered." As we chew it, the sugar dissolves, the fat melts and the caramel traps the peanuts so the entire combination of flavors is blissfully experienced in the mouth at the same time.
The book is Kessler's attempt to understand how the brain responds to such perfectly designed food, and how people develop an uncontrolled eating pattern he calls "conditioned hypereating."
*Shrug* We don't know if it's worth a read or not. We just think it sounds like an interesting look at the modern food environment, where nearly everything consumable is packaged and marketed to you in the most attractive way possible. If you're a frequent dieter or overeater (Kessler admits to having been both), or just interested in the concept of food marketing, you might find it worth looking into.
"How the Food Makers Captured Our Brains" [New York Times]
(Photo: Got Jenna)
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Comments:
My grandmother used to do this, too. Her food was just loaded with sugar, fat, and salt. It was absolutely delicious.
Agreed. They call this baking and making food. Too bad humanity has unfortunately reached perfect in some cases
well, it's not surprising. We've been selected by evolutionary pressures to be good at finding food that's tasty, that has fat, salt, sugar -- all indicators of nutritional value at a point long ago when life was a fight for survival on scraps of whatever you could find.
Now that we have food production, and cheap sweet/salty/fatty things, we no longer have to struggle to get by, yet our animal instincts still value those foods. Naturally leads to overeating.
And companies are not dumb -- they found this out by experimentation (or just guessing) and have unlocked the key to our mouths (and wallets).
It is your job as an educated human being to recognize this and control your baser urges (I'm not saying deny them completely), for your greater benefit.
Designer foods. Are we surprised?
I really want a snickers now!
So the takeaway from this is that if Food Scientists paired up with a certain blue muppet, the Cookie Monster would have ruled the world?
Awesome!
Or rather, a damned shame. I for one would have welcomed a blue-felt, ping-pong-ball eyed, dessert biscuit-devouring overlord.
@B: You bet. Then tomorrow it'll be "sorry boss, I can't come in today due to a bad case of conditioned hypereating. Great. So much for another company's productivity.
For whatever reason, I hate Snickers, in spite of the clever commercials.
FEAST!!!!!
This book was a fascinating read. For those who enjoy(ed) Michael Pollan's books, this is in the same vein.
Even though as a cynic, I know this takes place, I was amazed at just how far the rabbit hole goes with the food industry's manipulation of tastes.
@Nathan Laughton: Adding cocaine to food would also make it more desireable. An incresed demand for such a food item would hardly be an indication of food perfection.
I think there is a lot of instant gratification in tasty food. It's easy to reach. And cheaper than antidepressants.
Often over-eating is one of possible addictions, to get that feeling of ''well-being''.
"Why does that chocolate chip cookie have such power over me?" Dr. Kessler asked in an interview. "Is it the cookie, the representation of the cookie in my brain? I spent seven years trying to figure out the answer."
Please tell me he didn't receive a government grant for this...
I just ate a Snickers after reading this.
Then, I came back to let you know.
If it's all so carefully engineered for a perfect eating experience, then why do the aforementioned foods (Snickers bars and Chili's entrees) taste like chemicals and preservatives? Please tell me I'm not the only one who tastes the bitter plastickyness of chemical food additives.
@Elizabeth Anderson: You're probably not the only one, but you're most likely in a very small minority that has little to no effect on how successful those foods are.
Sky blue. Ocean wet. News at 11.
@Elizabeth Anderson: Yeah I can't stand Snickers bars and I think Chili's food all tastes like overpriced s**t...
*shrug*
I just finished this book, and I definitely recommend it. It makes you think about what you put into your mouth. He did a lot of research for this book (the results from the children's eating habits study were frightening)and although there's a lot of science here, it's written in an easy-to-read way. The food rehab section at the end has some good, basic common sense advice.
@Elizabeth Anderson: Does cilantro taste like soap to you, by any chance? You might be a supertaster.
"Food" and "manufacturerd" shouldn't have to be used in the same sentence.
How dare they attempt to make foods tasty. There should be a law against that!
I'd like to start a company that will produce hideous looking and rotten tasting food. Think it has a future? I mean c'mon. The sky is blue.
Yeah, I agree that companies are only interested in making a buck but on the other hand you are going to die anyway.
'food that requires little chewing' I love that line - reminds me of the goo people sucked on in 'Idiocracy' or the feeding habits of the 'Quark' crew.
Kessler's book makes a pretty convincing case for this to happen, down with a very rich documentation and scientific research papers.@XianZomby:
Actually it's not necessary to add cocaine. Research has found that the perfect combination of fat, sugar and salt stimulates the reward system just as much as cocaine.
That's (at 3:1) all in your mind. You can't taste most of the chemical additives in foods because they're engineered to have no taste. The ones which do have a taste are simply refined forms of the chemicals which naturally give foods their tastes.
The only chemicals you can taste are the ones which are designed to be tasted. Except in the unlikely event that you're a supertaster, as above, though that's still pushing it.
....huh.
As a product developer, I wish I'd known about what I was doing - I could have doubled the "bliss" ingredients. I thought I was only trying to make the foods taste edible.
Kessler seems to forget that not all food is functional, some of it was meant to be fun.
Snicker's bars are not a modern food - they were invented in the first half of the last century. I really doubt that they had any idea how dangerous a thing they were making back then.
Although the thesis sounds obvious, you'd be shocked by some of the info in the book. It's pretty horrifying stuff, actually.
Those three things are actually why I hate Snickers... It's too sweet, too salty, and makes my mouth feel greasy after eating one. Ugh.
well this explains my addiction to Coca-cola, Cheeze-its & Chocolate ice cream ... DUH !
NOTE to SOYLENT GREEN producers:
Put more salt, fat & sugar in people for future harvesting ...
@RvLeshrac: I think it's certainly fair to say that additives are engineered so that most people don't taste--or at least notice--them. However, if 25% of the population falls into the supertaster category, it seems unfair to dismiss someone else's experience out of hand. (And, yes, I can taste chemical additives in loads of food. Don't know if I'm a supertaster, but I am a from-scratch cook who knows what actual food tastes like.)
Millions of years of evolution have led us to want sugar, fat, and salt. Hundreds of years of evolution have led retailers and marketers to provide consumers with what they want. How exactly is this some evil conspiracy?
I have always thought I tasted sweetener in McDonalds hamburger. The Big & Tasty has an almost dessert-like taste to me.
As someone who took Food Science courses, none of this is news to me, but the book sounds very interesting. I'm going to have to check it out.
Research has found that the perfect combination of fat, sugar and salt stimulates the reward system just as much as cocaine.
@Decius: If food = cocaine to your brain and, according to the ruder comments in other posts, overweight people are just lazy and have no willpower does that mean people addicted to cocaine just lack willpower?
I'm salivating right now thinking about that delicious, perfect food.
yes! sugar, fat, and salt makes food taste good...just watch children at a birthday party or a school cafeteria if you're still skeptic. given the option, most children (and adults for that matter) will pick pizza over plain chicken breast, chips over veggies, and soda over water.
or during that "special time of the month" most ladies will binge on foods that are sugary, fatty, and salty. food that tastes good makes us feel good.
i can't believe so much money and time was spent on this "science." no rehab is needed. it's called making-better-choices
I don't need a book to tell me that. I knew it all along, every time I went to the vending machine.
@MameDennis [love your username, by the way]: I'm not a big fan of Chili's, etc., but I don't think it's because I'm tasting chemical additives, I think it's because it's not good compared to fresh, tasty, and well-prepared stuff.
But I don't think that means Kessler's wrong; fresh, tasty, and well-prepared creme brulee, or cinnamon rolls, or buttery mashed potatoes do indeed hit a certain bliss spot for me. I've just had enough physiological and time experience to be able to factor flavor in as well as the sugar and salt hit.
@snowmoon: It's not really making foods tasty, though, since plenty of tasty foods don't exert the same pull; it's making food as irresistible as cigarettes are to the nicotine-addicted.
@Skaperen: Yeah, this is just saying people like tasty food, and food companies try to make tasty food. I'm pretty sure "ancient" food was designed (well, cooked) to be satisfying as possible, too.
@Elizabeth Anderson: Just because you're not a "suprtaster" doesn't mean you can't tell when something's been engineered. In my house, we call it the "SYSCO taste" because all those bulk foods from that wholesale food product supplier have an undeniably similar "fake" taste. Real food you make in your house simply tastes diffrent. Once you learn to enjoy the taste of real food, you will be able to recognize the strange taste of engineered food products.
Mmmmm, I could sure go for some sugar, fat and salt right now. Chocolate ice cream and potato chips, here I come.