A lot of ultra processed foods are also ultra palatable foods so they're high in fat, sugar and salt and very hard to stop eating. They're also calorie dense so you eat past the point where you might become full with less calorie dense foods. I read this article earlier today and really liked it except that I thought the author went a little light on the judgement against this type of food manufacturing. Yes, we really do live in a world where it can be hard to both find and prepare "real" food, but the consequences of a western or specifically American diet have proven to be pretty intense.

[–] AttackBunny@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

@lagomorphlecture Oh, there is TONS of science and research behind keeping people addicted to UPFs.

_"In a recent article in the New York Times Magazine, food scientist Steven Witherly describes Cheetos as “one of the most marvelously constructed foods on the planet, in terms of pure pleasure.”

The cheese puffs’ greatest quality, Witherly says in the article, is its ability to melt in your mouth. “It’s called vanishing caloric density…If something melts down quickly, your brain thinks that there’s no calories in it…you can just keep eating it forever.”

This deception, writer Michael Moss tells us, isn’t accidental: snack food companies do a lot of research in order to design foods that fool your mind and bewitch your taste buds into a constant state of craving–a state industry insiders call “the bliss point.” To achieve this “bliss point,” Moss writes, food designers pay close attention to something called “sensory-specific satiety.”

“In lay terms,” Moss says, sensory-specific satiety “is the tendency for big, distinct flavors to overwhelm the brain, which responds by depressing your desire to have more.” To avoid this, successful junk food products like Coca-Cola and Doritos consist of “complex formulas that pique the taste buds enough to be alluring but don’t have a distinct, overriding single flavor that tells the brain to stop eating.”_ source

@Lost_Wanderer

[–] lagomorphlecture 3 points 1 year ago

I actually read Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss quite some time ago and it was really interesting. If this interests you and you haven't read it, I suggest taking a look at it.