Not All Foods Are Created Equal: Why it’s hard to stop eating even if you’re full
Well, the truth is: Scientists engineered food that way!!
Think back to a party or event where there is food, snacks, and sweets all around. I know that during those times, it’s hard to say no to the delicious foods around me even when my fullness starts settling in. But have you ever stopped to think about why “there’s always room for dessert”?
Not all foods are created equal.
Some are yummy to eat, or palatable, which is helpful since we need to eat to survive. A piece of fresh fruit is palatable and filled with nutrients and calories. Other foods like chips, pizza, and warm cookies are more than tasty. They seem irresistible and are easy to keep munching on even when feeling full.
In these irresistible foods, a harmony lies between fat, sugar, and salt that creates an artificially intensified palatability known as hyperpalatability. Most hyperpalatable foods you’ll run into are ultra-processed foods (UPFs). These foods are generally high in calories and sodium while low in fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Ultra-processed and hyperpalatable foods are so delicious that they send signals to the reward center of our brains which triggers dopamine and serotonin release. The good feelings associated with eating such deliciousness (I’m looking at you, Oreos) are so intense that the reward system overrides the part of our brain that regulates our satiety signaling, or when we feel full.
Food companies know and mastered how our brains react to different flavors, combinations, crunch dynamics, and finger-lickability ratios. Scientists engineered ultra-processed foods so that we crave them when we don’t have them and can’t stop once we start eating them. They go as far as using MRI machines to scan the activity in peoples’ brains when eating different foods so they can better stimulate their reward center! The variety of calorie dense, high sugar and high fat foods that surround us every day hyperstimulate our brain and interfere with our satiety signaling, which is why we keep eating even when we’re full.
Never have we as a society been bombarded with more habit-forming foods than right now. It is important to be conscious of the foods we eat as consumers. Don’t let the food industry control your eating habits. Now, I’m not saying that you can’t enjoy a donut for breakfast or french fries with lunch. What I’m saying is that the food industry has designed food to be addictive. Consumption of ultra-processed, hyperpalatable, addictive food in our day to day diets leads to adverse health outcomes such as obesity, cardio-metabolic risks, cancer, type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, irritable bowel syndrome, depression and frailty conditions, and all-cause mortality.
We must preserve our health, especially as we age and our immune system declines. We need to be mindful of what we put into our bodies and how it affects us.
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