4 reasons unhealthy eating can be addictive
Published March 6, 2013 1:24 PM
|
Updated March 6, 2013 1:57 PM
1 Min Read
In his new book, Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, Moss examines some of the corporate research techniques (either perfidious or scrumptious, based on your perspective) companies have used to make food irresistible. These methods create the greatest amount of crave, and they may just be why your workforce cant stop eating.
The bliss point
Creating a taste pleasing to the widest swath of a population is an exact science. Rarely just a matter of too sweet or too salty, taste must be balanced across a number of factors. Within a given bliss point, there is a range of each part, Moss says, so companies can figure out how little of a key ingredient (say, syrup) they need to use and still achieve bliss.
Avoiding sensory-specific satiety
Moss says the U.S. military has long employed food researchers to help make rations that are easy and tempting to eat in their entirety, so that soldiers get all the nourishment they should. That same research has been used to make everything at civilian grocery stores from soda to pasta sauce more desirable. What scientists found is that large, distinct flavors overwhelm the brain, decreasing the need for more in a response called sensory-specific satiety. Winning flavor combos play with the taste buds without the single, overriding flavor that puts the brakes on a craving.
Mouth feel
Moss says this is the way a product interacts with the mouth, as defined more specifically by a host of related sensations, from dryness to gumminess to moisture release. A term better known by wine stewards, mouth feel, too, requires precision. People enjoy potato chips, for example, that snap at about four pounds of pressure per square inch.
Vanishing caloric density
Steven Witherly, author of Why Humans Like Junk Food, tells Moss that Cheetos are one of the most marvelously constructed foods on the planet, in terms of pure pleasure. Witherly says Cheetos play with a number of food-science advances, but their melt-in-the-mouth transience may be their biggest asset. If something melts down quickly, your brain thinks that theres no calories in it, he says. You can just keep eating it forever.
