Why Can’t I Stop?

If there’s one question that frustrates all of us, including myself at times, it’s “Why can’t I stop eating ____?” For me, it’s salty and crunchy such as nuts and chips. For others, it’s refined carbohydrates such as baked goods, or sweets such as chocolate or cookies. Why can’t we just stop eating them? Why are we not able to say “Enough!” once we’ve started eating?

The reasons appear to be simple. The common denominators in every processed food appear to be salt (sodium), sugar, or fat, or some combination of the three. You don’t really ever hear someone saying they went on a kale-eating binge, do you? It’s always some processed or refined food. I’ll add fast foods to that list because the foods are cooked and assembled in a way that makes us want more.

I’ll examine a couple of reasons why these foods are so problematic on Thursday. For some insight on the food industry and how the food industry manufactures foods we can’t resist, get a copy of Michael Moss’s book Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Industry Hooked Us. It’s a revealing look at how companies spend a lot of money on research to put together the flavors we can’t resist.

Dr. Chet