Latest / The Original Self Podcast / Episode 16 The Engineered Plate: How Hyper-Palatable Foods Are Designed to Defeat You

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Episode 16 The Engineered Plate: How Hyper-Palatable Foods Are Designed to Defeat You · The Original Self Podcast

0:12
Welcome to the Original Self Podcast. I'm Evet
0:16
DeCota, owner of DeCota Life Coaching and a psychology
0:19
-informed life coach exploring resilience, mindset,
0:24
and the courage to become your authentic self.
0:27
This is a space for honest conversations about
0:31
growth, identity, relationships, and all the
0:35
messy moments in between that shape who we become.
0:39
Between the salon chair and coaching sessions,
0:42
I've watched people move through life in patterns
0:45
they rarely notice. Patterns that are subtle,
0:50
familiar, and incredibly hard to see from the
0:53
inside. Today's episode is about something I
0:57
hear constantly from clients and honestly from
1:00
myself. Most of us have been told the same story
1:04
about food. If you can't stop eating, you lack
1:08
discipline. If you gain weight, you don't have
1:11
enough willpower. If you keep reaching for the
1:15
same foods over and over again, the problem has
1:18
to be you. Today I want to challenge that story.
1:23
This is episode 16, The Engineered Plane. how
1:28
hyper palatable foods are designed to defeat
1:31
you. Welcome back. Last time I introduced you
1:47
to a series I've been building for a while, one
1:50
that uses the lens of psychology to examine something
1:54
we all do every single day. yet we rarely understand
1:58
as deeply as we think we do. I told you in the
2:02
introduction to Before the Rules, a psychology
2:05
of food series, episode 15, that this series
2:10
isn't really about food. It's about how we lose
2:15
ourselves around it and how we find our way back.
2:21
And as I promised, we'd start there with the
2:25
self -blame, that follows so many of us into
2:28
the kitchen every single day. So let's start
2:32
with the collective you. Think about the last
2:37
time you told yourself, I'm just gonna have a
2:41
few Doritos. Or I'm just gonna eat one brown
2:46
butter chocolate chip cookie with salt, sea salt.
2:51
Or that you'd stop eating the popcorn that you
2:53
made after this next episode of the TV show that
2:58
you've been bingeing. And then you won't eat
3:01
anything else for the rest of the night. But
3:04
you didn't stop. And somewhere in the aftermath,
3:09
maybe in the moment of sitting with that empty
3:12
bag or on a drive home, and you go to the drive
3:17
through that you hadn't planned to stop at. There's
3:21
a feeling that you get. It's not just fullness.
3:26
It's something uncomfortable, like a specific
3:29
kind of self -blame that so many of us know intimately.
3:35
And maybe we've never named it before. Never
3:39
named it out loud. Most people interpret that
3:44
feeling as evidence of a personal failing. I'm
3:49
weak. I have no discipline. or other people seem
3:54
to manage this just fine. So what's wrong with
3:56
me? That story is so familiar. It's so deeply
4:01
embedded in the way we talk about our bodies
4:04
or eating and how we speak about self -control.
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It rarely gets questioned. We just accept it
4:14
as the truth, carry the weight, the shame and
4:18
the defeat of it. everywhere we go. But here's
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a question I asked myself maybe six years ago
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that changed the entire direction of my motivation,
4:32
goals, and honestly the way I understand myself.
4:38
What if the problem isn't that you're broken?
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What if it's the environment working exactly
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as intended and you were never supposed to be
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able to easily resist the foods that harm you.
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Because here's what I've come to understand through
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the years of psychology study, through my own
5:02
research, and through watching clients, friends,
5:06
and obviously myself navigate this. Willpower
5:11
is real, but not infinite. It was never designed
5:18
to compete alone against a system that's built
5:22
with billions of dollars and decades of neuroscience
5:26
specifically designed to override it. To understand
5:32
where we are today, it helps to understand how
5:35
we got here. There was a moment in American history
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from astronauts in space eating and drinking
5:42
powdered foods through the 60s and 70s explosion
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of TV dinners and canned everything, to the 80s
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invention of the microwave, and when the relationship
5:56
between humans and what they ate began to shift
6:00
fundamentally. Before that, most people ate what
6:05
they grew, what was prepared, and what was available
6:09
to them. The food was simpler. The flavors were
6:14
very straightforward and your body's natural
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signals of hunger, fullness and satisfaction
6:23
largely guided your food experience. But then
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food became an industry and industries compete.
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They compete for shelf space, market share, your
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attention and your loyalty. And the industry
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that wins the competition is the one that receives
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the most of your repeated purchases. But those
6:51
winners, they don't win by accident. They won
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by science. A psychophysicist, Howard Moskowitz,
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discovered it for us by testing something deceptively
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simple. He tested at what point does sweetness
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stop being pleasurable. how much sugar is too
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much before enjoyment starts to fall away. He
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called that peak, where something is enjoyed
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the most, the bliss point, and his findings changed
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the food industry forever. He found that pleasure
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follows a curve. As sugar increases, enjoyment
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rises, but only up to a point. Then it drops.
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And once the food industry understood that a
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bliss point could be engineered, not just for
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sugar, but for the precise combination of salt,
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sugar, and fat simultaneously, everything changed.
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Brands like Prego and Pepsi and Dr. Pepper used
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multivariate analysis to maximize their product's
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appeal to consumers. turning them into dominant
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forces on supermarket shelves. That R &D, that
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scientific experiment, is what birthed the hyper
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-palatable or ultra -processed food industry
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as we know it today. What followed that was an
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arms race of palatability. Companies began spending
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enormous resources not to just make food taste
8:35
good, but to make it taste in a way the brain
8:39
couldn't easily walk away from. Understanding
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the why requires just a brief detour into neuroscience.
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So I can show you how any willpower fight we
8:53
think we can muster completely falls apart. Don't
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worry, it's not nerdy science stuff. So this
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is how the brain and hunger and food work together.
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The brain regulates eating in two ways. The homeostatic
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pathway, which determines the body's energy need.
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And when we run low, a hunger signal is sent
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out to tell us that we're hungry. And it's also
9:26
the system that tells us when we're full. It
9:30
is practical and functional when it's not been
9:33
messed with. The other system is the hedonic
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pathway or the reward system. It operates on
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pleasure, motivation, but not nutritional need.
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It has no concern for whether your body needs
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more fuel. Its only focus is on what feels good,
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what tastes good, what smells good. Usually these
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two systems exist in harmony, but hyperpalatable
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food engineered to hit that bliss point activates
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the hedonic pathways so strongly that they override
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the homeostatic ones over and over. So even when
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your body knows it's had enough, your reward
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system has yet to reach satisfaction. And so
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you keep eating those chips, that cookie. The
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biology of the brain was built for a world that
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we actually no longer live in. Then there's dopamine.
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It's often called the feel -good chemical, but
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I believe that phrase undersells what it actually
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does. Dopamine is less about pleasure and more
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about anticipation, the wanting. Research from
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Harvard's nutrition department has shown that
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the expectation of a reward stimulates more dopamine
11:02
activity than the reward itself. And the crazy
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part is that if the reward exceeds the dopamine
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response, even if it's larger than expected,
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our motivation for the reward drives us to seek
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the experience again. Think about the smell of
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something cooking in your favorite restaurant
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as you walk past, or the crinkle of a bag of
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your favorite snack in someone else's hands,
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or even the image of a particular food, they
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all trigger dopamine before you take a single
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bite. That is ancient neurology responding to
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signals that it's never resisted. One of the
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most elegant biological mechanisms we have is
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called sensory -specific satiety. It's very easily
12:01
exploited by industries selling the drug of hyperpalatable
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foods. The way it works is that as you eat a
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particular food, the pleasure you get from that
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specific flavor gradually declines. Your brain
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gets bored with it. Its satisfaction drops. and
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the drive to continue eating fades until you
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stop. But when a product is engineered to contain
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multiple distinct flavor compounds, like fat
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hitting one receptor, salt another, or sugar
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hitting more receptors, and then there's layered
12:42
artificial enhancers throughout, the sensory
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-specific satiety cannot perform. Before one
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element reaches its satisfaction point, the next
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one is just pulling you forward. So the finish
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line keeps moving. Companies like McDonald's
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completely know that. McDonald's puts added sugar
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in far more products than most people realize,
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including their hamburger buns, their sauces,
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even their salads. A quarter pounder with cheese
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isn't an accident. It's a scientifically calibrated
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combination of fat, salt, and sugar designed
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to light up your hedonic pathways, bypass the
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signals that would normally tell you to stop
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eating, and flood the brain with enough dopamine
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that the craving reactivates the next time you
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see those golden arches. Or a commercial. You're
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not weak. You've just been very studied by companies
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that will stop at nothing to make that almighty
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dollar. So about six years ago, I found myself
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in a pattern I couldn't quite explain. After
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work or on weekends, sometimes, a lot of times,
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when I wasn't particularly hungry, I was pulling
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into McDonald's. Not because I decided to. Not
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because I was even craving something specifically.
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I would come back to awareness that I was there
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already in the drive -through line. Like, I didn't
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black out. It was just so unconscious. It was
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like some part of my brain had decided before
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I was even consulted, like a mind control experiment,
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that I was going. Once I learned how these foods
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are engineered, the more I understood how powerless
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I really was against them. One of the questions
14:55
that launched my academic research was why do
15:00
intelligent, disciplined, accomplished people
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struggle so much around food? Not people who
15:07
are uninformed or careless, but people who have
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built careers, raised families, navigated genuine
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complexity in their lives. Yet they still find
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themselves feeling completely powerless in front
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of a bag of something that they didn't intend
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to eat. Some of it comes down to awareness. Many
15:29
of us move through our days on autopilot eating
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without ever stopping. to ask what's actually
15:37
driving this. But even for the people who are
15:41
paying attention, the struggle is real. That's
15:46
where Roy Baumeister's research on self -control
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became very intriguing to me. Baumeister found
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that self -regulation functions like a muscle.
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It can be used, and it can be depleted. Every
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act of self -control draws from the same limited
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pool of mental energy. Whether managing an emotion,
16:14
or pushing through a difficult task, or simply
16:17
resisting the cookie someone left in the break
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room. And by the way, those cookies are a daily
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occurrence in the salon break room. And I have
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a very big love -hate relationship with them.
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But... Baumeister ran an experiment where participants
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who had spent energy resisting chocolate chip
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cookies gave up on doing a difficult puzzle eight
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minutes into doing it compared to other participants
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that didn't resist a cookie, wasn't even having
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a cookie in front of them. They stayed in doing
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that puzzle for 19 minutes. They weren't more
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capable. They just hadn't used their self -regulatory
17:06
resources yet. The reason I'm telling you about
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this research is that if you think about yourself
17:14
by 10 o 'clock at night after a full day of decisions,
17:19
demands, emotional management, you are not the
17:23
same person who set intentions in the morning.
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Your prefrontal cortex, which is in charge of
17:33
planning, exercising self -control, and also
17:36
engages in long -term thinking, is running on
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less. And that's precisely why you find yourself
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tiredly standing in the middle of your kitchen,
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or pressing buy on the food app, grabbing the
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engineered food without a second thought. As
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part of my psychology research at Dominican University
17:59
of California, I studied the relationship between
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stress impulsivity and hyperpalatable food consumption.
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What I expected to find and what I did find was
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that stress increases hyperpalatable food consumption.
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But the finding that surprised me most was that
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consumption rates in stressful scenarios and
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non -stressful scenarios were nearly identical.
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People weren't just reaching for these foods
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because they were stressed. They were reaching
18:35
for them because of fatigue, boredom, habit,
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and it often occurred in the evening. The food
18:46
themselves had become maybe the path of least
18:50
resistance, regardless of emotional state. And
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impulsivity, not stress, turned out to be the
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stronger independent predictor of how much someone
19:02
consumed. That made me think of when I was growing
19:07
up, we had what we called the junk drawer. It
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was filled with cookies, candies, chips, all
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the food that we know now is hyperpalatable.
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We weren't allowed to eat from it whenever we
19:23
wanted, but it was always there. Sometimes we
19:27
ask, we'd ask if we could have something. And
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sometimes if you're me, you'd stink it. Looking
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back, what's interesting isn't that the food
19:39
was there. It's that nobody thought twice about
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it. It was normal. Nobody was trying to harm
19:47
us. Nobody was having conversations about food
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manipulation. dopamine or ultra -processed foods.
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It was just food, at least as far as I understood
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it. I think that's an important point because
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most of us inherited our relationship with eating
20:08
before we were even old enough to understand
20:11
what we were inheriting. The food was normal.
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The habits were normal. The constant presence
20:21
of highly rewarding snacks was normal. I didn't
20:27
choose that environment. Many of us didn't choose
20:29
that. We grew up inside it. And when something's
20:33
always been normal, it's incredibly difficult
20:37
to recognize how much influence it's still having
20:41
on you decades later. It is for me. This matters
20:48
enormously for how we think about self -blame.
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Intelligence doesn't protect you from the hedonic
20:55
pathways. Success doesn't exempt you from decision
21:01
fatigue. Discipline is a resource and resources
21:06
run out. When your capacity for resistance is
21:10
low and your environment is deliberately constructed
21:13
to exploit that exact moment, the outcome isn't
21:17
a character flaw. It's math. We tend to talk
21:24
about the consequences of hyperpalatable foods
21:27
almost exclusively in terms of weight. But the
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physical health implications are real and documented.
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The research connecting ultra -processed food
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consumption to heart disease, type 2 diabetes,
21:45
metabolic disorders like high blood pressure
21:48
is substantial. But another cost is the mental
21:53
overhead. It's that constant low -level negotiation
21:58
that happens around eating when you've lost trust
22:02
in your own responses. Am I actually hungry or
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am I just bored? Am I eating because I want this
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or because I can't stop? Why can I be disciplined
22:16
in every other area of my life, but not with
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food? I have thought these thoughts so many times
22:24
in my life that I've lost count. I smoked cigarettes
22:29
for 13 years, at least a pack a day, and I was
22:33
able to quit smoking. I've never had another
22:37
cigarette for over 25 years. Not once have I
22:41
taken a drag or even thought about smoking again.
22:46
Why was I able to conquer that compulsion, yet
22:49
I've struggled with food cravings and food noise
22:52
almost my entire life? I think the answer is
22:55
more simple than I actually want it to be. I
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don't need cigarettes to stay alive. I can walk
23:03
away from them completely and never look back.
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But I can't abstain from eating. Nobody can.
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And when the thing you're trying to navigate
23:14
is also the thing your body requires to survive,
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willpower becomes almost an impossible standard
23:23
to hold yourself to. I've done it at times for
23:29
a few weeks, even a few years, but I always revert.
23:35
Add that to the lifetime of processed foods that
23:39
rewired the signals my natural biology was supposed
23:42
to rely on. And a very likely addiction to sugar
23:47
that started way before I was old enough to question
23:50
what I was eating. And the deck was never stacked
23:54
in my favor. And that internal tug of war never
24:00
really goes away. It shows up as intrusive thoughts
24:04
about food that occupy real cognitive space.
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The shame that accumulates quietly and then surfaces
24:13
in the least expected moments in a dressing room,
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looking at a photo of yourself or in a conversation
24:21
you weren't expecting to have knocks us off balance.
24:27
The fundamental disconnection from your own body
24:30
is the real injury lying underneath these questions.
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When your body overrides signals enough times
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because the food you eat is specifically designed
24:41
to do so, you're unable to hear those signs clearly.
24:46
It makes you stop trusting hunger or fullness.
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You begin to experience your own biology as the
24:55
enemy rather than information. The difficulty
24:59
of spending years at war with your body makes
25:02
the idea of listening to it feel truly unnerving.
25:08
It creates a distrust of self because you can
25:11
change what you eat in a week, but rebuilding
25:14
a relationship with your own body takes considerably
25:17
longer. I know it starts with understanding what
25:21
happened to create the distance in the first
25:24
place. If you're feeling angry, annoyed or disappointed
25:29
at the companies that sell hyper palatable foods,
25:32
I completely understand that feeling. But it's
25:36
not my intent for this episode. It's not going
25:39
to end with me speaking about a new plan that
25:42
will be a miracle, or a list of foods to avoid,
25:46
or a protocol to follow. I'm interested in the
25:52
meaningful difference between making a choice
25:54
and having a choice made for you, for us. because
25:59
most of us move through our relationships with
26:01
food without ever clearly seeing which of those
26:04
is happening. We experience a craving and interpret
26:09
it as desire without even knowing that the craving
26:14
was activated by dopamine responding to engineered
26:18
anticipation. We eat past fullness and call it
26:23
weakness. without knowing that the sensory -specific
26:27
satiety was circumvented by design. We resist
26:33
all day and collapse at night and decide we don't
26:38
have any willpower without knowing that willpower
26:41
is a finite resource that was steadily drawn
26:46
down by everything else the day asked of us.
26:51
It's also worth noting that this conversation
26:54
is beginning to move beyond individual responsibility
26:58
and into public policy. Researchers, physicians,
27:04
and policymakers are increasingly asking whether
27:08
it makes sense to place the entire burden on
27:11
consumers when so much of the modern food environment
27:15
has been deliberately engineered to drive consumption.
27:21
They're raising questions about food labeling,
27:24
advertising, advertising directed at children,
27:29
the availability of ultra -processed foods in
27:32
schools, and also whether consumers are receiving
27:36
enough information to make an informed decision
27:39
about what they're eating. Countries that are
27:43
not America have already induced warning labels
27:47
and restrictions on certain forms of marketing.
27:51
More countries are debating whether highly processed
27:54
foods should be regulated more like products
27:57
that carry known health risks, like tobacco and
28:01
alcohol. Regardless of where those conversations
28:05
ultimately lead, the fact that they're happening
28:08
at all represents a huge shift. For decades,
28:13
the dominant message was simple. If you're struggling,
28:17
the problem's you. But when governments and researchers
28:22
and public health organizations begin asking
28:25
questions about the environment itself, it suggests
28:29
we're starting to recognize that human behavior
28:32
doesn't happen in a vacuum. The choices we make
28:37
are always influenced by the systems we live
28:41
inside. Understanding the system doesn't excuse
28:46
us from participating in our lives. It doesn't
28:49
remove agency. However, it gives us the ability
28:54
to see more clearly. And when we see clearly,
28:59
we finally begin to ask the right questions.
29:03
It's not what's wrong with me, but what is actually
29:08
happening here? It's not why can't I control
29:12
myself, but what am I really responding to in
29:16
this moment? That shift from self -blame to curiosity
29:22
is where awareness work begins. It may be uncomfortable,
29:28
I know it is, but curiosity requires slowing
29:32
down in moments when the pull to just eat on
29:37
autopilot is very strong. It's honest and it's
29:42
the beginning of coming back to yourself. What
29:47
I'd like to leave you with today is simple. Before
29:50
you make your next food decision, just this once,
29:55
pause long enough to notice what's happening.
29:58
Not to judge it or override it through sheer
30:02
force of will. Just notice. Are you hungry? Are
30:08
you tired? Is the pull to eat ultra -processed
30:15
foods coming from inside you or from something
30:19
in the environment? There's no perfect answer.
30:24
You just have to become curious enough to look.
30:29
I know there was a version of you, a version
30:33
of us before all of this, who knew how to eat.
30:38
That version that trusted hunger and recognized
30:41
fullness and didn't spend your cognitive energy
30:45
negotiating with that box of seized candy, the
30:48
pint of cherry Garcia, or that cold slice of
30:52
pepperoni in the middle of the night. The work
30:55
of this series isn't to turn you into someone
30:57
new. It's to help you remember who that person
31:01
was and to slowly start without judgment to find
31:05
your way back to your original self. In the next
31:10
episode, We're going deeper into one of the most
31:14
misunderstood experiences in our relationship
31:16
with eating. Food noise. It's that constant mental
31:22
chatter about what you should eat, what you shouldn't
31:26
eat, and what you're going to eat later. And
31:31
whether any of it makes you a good or bad person.
31:35
We'll talk about where it comes from, why some
31:38
people experience it far more intensely. than
31:42
others, and what it actually means when the food
31:47
noise gets louder. Look for episode 17, food
31:51
noise, why you can't stop thinking about food.
31:56
That's next time on the original self podcast.
31:59
Until then, thank you for being here. If today's
32:03
conversation resonated with you and you feel
32:05
ready to explore your own growth, you can learn
32:08
more about working with me in the episode notes.
32:12
I'll see you next time.