Junk Food is Engineered to be Addictive

We’ve previously discussed how salty, fatty and especially sugary foods cause our brains to “light up” with chemicals associated with pleasure.

In the food industry, increasing sales often means giving consumers more of what they want. The experience of eating involves more than just taste, and includes appearance, aroma, texture and the way it feels in your mouth. In addition to proving that a food product is safe to eat, these factors all need to fit the consumer profile you’re targeting – after all, if you don’t get the formula right, your competitors will.

It should come as no surprise that “what we want” is often high levels of salt, fat and sugar – and food manufacturers have every commercial incentive to find the precise levels that keep us coming back for more.

When it comes to taste, the amounts and proportions of ingredients can be optimised to provide the right flavour hit. Some processed foods like salty potato chips can actually desensitise your tastebuds, and other proportions of different ingredients can be used to encourage you to eat more.

Journalist Michael Moss examined this in detail in “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food” (The New York Times Magazine, 20 February 2013), looking at how processed foods are engineered – using market research and scientific knowledge from psychology, maths and chemistry – to create recipes with mass appeal.

Once a line of processed food products has been readied for the market, the final step is to use branding as a pre-emptive strike against any guilt or mental restraints you’re likely to have when considering purchasing the product – often resulting in some sort of healthful claim on the packet.

Government regulations are responsible for the standardised nutrition information you see on food labels, although there are controversial loopholes allowing food manufacturers to make them tougher to read. With growing public awareness and interest in healthy food, it’s these regulations that we expect to become more of a battleground in the future. The threat of new labelling requirements and introduction of “junk-food taxes” have been noted by large stakeholders in the industry, and preparations are already underway – often involving the very same marketing and branding strategies.

As it becomes harder and harder to tell healthy product labels apart from the green ones at the grocery store, it becomes more and more important to help your team build genuinely healthy eating habits. Holistic Services Group’s Workplace Nutrition Programs build practical, evidence-based eating habits into the workday – contact us today on 1300 889 073, or Enquire Now – we respond to all enquiries within 12 hours.

• healthy eating
• workplace wellbeing