Desire For Pleasurable Foods
With the wide variety of foods available to the public at a moment’s notice, it’s not surprising that the average consumer becomes addicted to the products they consume. The standard diet promotes eating 3 or more times a day, which can become habit-forming when overdone. To break this pattern, take control of what and how often you eat.
The masses tend to have a compulsion to eat certain foods more than others, which starts to mirror the tendencies of an addiction (see Top 6 Signs You May Have a Food Addiction). The foods that are addictive are not bad because of what they are but because of what they’re composed of, which is often an insidious combination of sugars, salts, and fats.
These are better known as palatable foods, and these addictive foods tend to stimulate regions of the brain responsible for pleasure and satisfaction. When the brain fires off positive signals in response to food, it creates a feedback loop that drives the search for more of that food.
Moderating the amount of these types of foods is key, but it can often be easier said than done, given how our brains are wired. Instead of relying on moderation and willpower, it’s much more effective to replace the foods that are most pleasurable with foods that provide the same response in taste and/or satiety.
Feeling satisfaction and overall enjoyment from food is key to making healthier eating a normal part of a sustainable, long-lasting lifestyle.
The Most Addictive Foods to Give Up
The foods that are the hardest to give up on a diet are often the ones that you crave the most, with most of these foods being bad for our health in more ways than one. Instead of reaching for the bowl of carrot sticks and hummus, you might want a snack with more salt or fat to keep your mind and stomach satisfied.
These foods that you crave are the ones marketed to consumers the most, and the average person doesn’t have control over the content that they consume daily from marketers. Watching a television program can cue dozens of images of food that never would have reached audiences were they not watching them (see Why You Experience Hunger During The Day)
These are some of the most familiar culprits of food that most have a challenge moderating in their diet:
Cookies
Cookies are such a guilty pleasure because of the wide variety of types and flavors that can be made, plus they’re the best dessert to eat when you’re on the move. Cookies can be quite addictive to eat, as they’re usually on the smaller side and contain high amounts of sugar in the small servings found in a typical batch. The high sugar content comes from the refined flour in them, as this flour breaks down into glucose extremely quickly in the bloodstream (refined flour has a higher glycemic index than table sugar).
Store-bought cookies often use high-fructose corn syrup for a longer shelf life, as it’s sweeter, cheaper, and more addictive than regular table sugar. High-fructose corn syrup drives hunger more than other addictive signals in the brain (see Why High Fructose Corn Syrup Is Just As Bad As Sugar). They also contain a decent amount of refined fats that are usually not naturally produced, as with many other store-brand cookies.
Chocolate
Chocolate contains fat, sugar, and compounds in the cacao product that send chocolate lovers into deep cravings when their sweet tooth is calling them. Chocolate is also considered an emotional food as it can affect mood throughout the day. It’s harder to resist chocolate because of the high content of sugar and polyphenols (antioxidants that tend to enhance mood).
To avoid bingeing on large amounts of unhealthy chocolate, it’s wise to avoid milk chocolate, as it contains most of the sugar-laden ingredients. Higher amounts of cacao (70% and above) have more of the good properties of cacao and less of the unnecessary sugar. Darker chocolate has higher amounts of fiber, copper, manganese, iron, and magnesium.
Chips
Rather than keeping you full for long periods, as other snack foods do, chips stimulate pleasure differently. The chip’s taste is enhanced by refined fats, salt, and starch, making each crunch better than the last. The texture of the potato or starch creates a great mouthfeel and reaches the brain’s pleasure center. The salt content is what truly makes chips addictive, as salt is preferred by the brain as a survival signal.
The body loses large amounts of salt when perspiring and needs to replenish sodium from the diet. With salt being a natural precursor for survival from our ancestors and salt used to preserve long shelf life products in the stores, chips are one of the highly addictive foods on the market. Eating chips can be much more enjoyable to consume than whole food sources, such as boiled potatoes, which do not stimulate cravings as strongly as Lay’s Potato Chips.
Ice Cream
Ice cream has all the palatability of cookies, with the added incentive that texture is a reward. Eating ice cream provides satisfaction from its high fat content, which gives the dessert a smooth texture. The fat also prolongs the dopamine reward signal, meaning the brain’s pleasure sensors are stimulated for longer. Ice cream can be dangerous when it’s store-bought rather than when you go out to a parlor, because it’s tempting to eat larger servings from your freezer.
Pizza
One of the staples of Western culture is pizza. Pizza contains hidden amounts of sugar in the tomato sauce and in the dough from all the refined flour. The thick layer of cheese makes the food extra fatty and adds more sodium, enhancing the flavor of the other ingredients.
Unlike other addictive foods, pizza has almost no soluble fiber (except when topped with added ingredients). While it’s extra high in calories from saturated fat, it has very poor satiety and does not keep the body full, even with smaller portions. For the amount of calories that you’re eating, you could have made a couple of regular meals with more nutritional value.
Food companies want the public to consume all of these highly processed foods for one simple reason: profit. The more frequently these cheaply produced foods are purchased, the more revenue these large corporations generate.
Big Tobacco Involvement With Food Conglomerates
By the 1950s it became well known cigarettes were highly addictive and were linked to cancer thanks to the Surgeon General and several other health researchers. Articles were written about the long-term effects of cigarettes, and the public started to acknowledge that this product was hazardous to their health.
As a result of the Surgeon General’s report in the 1960s, tobacco sales began to decline around the mid-1970s, and Big Tobacco companies like Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds became worried about shrinking profit margins due to consumer demand.
Tobacco companies decided to play defense and released propaganda explaining why their products were not harmful to health. These companies then pivoted into the food industry by purchasing large food corporations to entice a new generation of customers.
RJ Reynolds purchased canned food companies like Del Monte and Nabisco, and Philip Morris bought Kraft and General Foods during the mid-to-late eighties for billions of dollars. With the United States population consuming 70% of its food from processed sources, a new large market became available to them.
Big Tobacco eventually decided to chemically engineer these foods to elicit cravings and light up the reward centers of the brain, similarly to the products they were selling to addicts of cigarettes. This was done with the help of food scientists, also known as flavorologists, who classified new ingredients as safe with the label ‘generally regarded as safe’ (GRAS for short).
By using the help of food scientists, the food conglomerates were able to produce highly palatable foods, or foods with a specific mix of ingredients that were more enticing to consume than any single natural ingredient. This is why it’s easier to eat fewer servings of natural foods than highly processed foods sold in stores.
When studies were conducted to show the effects of food companies purchased by Big Tobacco, they found a these foods were much more palatable then food corporations not purchased by tobacco giants. Today, these companies have renamed themselves and sold off their businesses to remain in the food industry and avoid the stigma of their reputation as cigarette producers.
How to Stop Addictive Foods
Moderation is key to controlling how much you eat; however, it can only slow compulsive eating to a certain extent. The best strategy for smarter food choices is to replace foods that trigger strong cravings with ones that are satisfying and flavorful.
A bad dieting strategy is eating a bunch of foods that you don’t like to get results that will only make you feel good temporarily. Exchanging bad foods out for good ones can be a slow progression towards alternative foods you can enjoy to eat regularly.
The common reason the foods on the list mentioned earlier can lead to overeating is that they’re missing a key component: fiber. Without fiber, food does not leave you satisfied, and the hunger comes back sooner rather than later.
Fiber is crucial for your gut health, as the bacteria in your gut (known as the microbiome) use it as an energy source to function and support the body efficiently. The good bacteria in the stomach release chemical signals to the brain to produce healthy effects in the body.
They also keep the body’s defense system strong and prevent the overgrowth of harmful bacteria that damage the stomach and digestive lining (this is known as SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth).
The following list of foods has some of the highest amounts of fiber and can be substituted for some of your favorite snacks and treats present in your diet:
Legumes
Legumes contain both insoluble and soluble fiber, which is needed for good bacteria in the gut. Examples of good legumes to add to meals include chickpeas (salads or soups), kidney beans (chili), and pigeon peas (with rice).
Onions/Garlic
Onions and garlic contain significant amounts of fiber and dramatically change the flavor profile of meals. These vegetables contain short-chain fatty acids that can reduce inflammation due to their high fiber content.
Kimchi/Sauerkraut
Kimchi is a staple Korean side dish that’s made with fermented cabbage or radishes with spices. Fermented vegetable have the benefit of added probiotic bacteria, which introduces large amounts of good bacteria through food that’s eaten. Sauerkraut also has this same effect and is great for additions to high protein meals such as steak or bratwurst to enhance the flavor profile.
Popcorn
Popcorn is a wonderful addition after meals when craving a salty, crunchy snack. It’s considered less healthy only when additives such as excess fat, salt, sugar, or artificial flavorings are added. Popcorn is a great substitute for potato chips because it’s more satiating thanks to its higher fiber content per serving.
Green Bananas
Green bananas don’t have the most appealing taste in comparison to yellow bananas because most of the resistant starch hasn’t been converted to sugar yet. However, adding a green banana or two once a week can provide enough fiber to change cravings for palatable foods in the long term. Green bananas have 3 times as much fiber as ripe bananas, which helps gut bacteria signal greater fullness to the brain.
The Wrap Up
A majority of addictive foods are not addictive because of what they are, but because of how and what they were made with. When food lacks natural ingredient sources, artificial chemicals do not produce satiety for long, leading to overeating. To address overconsumption of food, certain high-fiber foods need to be added to the diet and eventually replace the hyperpalatable foods that have become a habit over time.
