The Committee to Nuke Elysium

Rewarding foods are rewiring our brains. As they do, we become more sensitive to the cues that lead us to anticipate the reward. In that circularity lies a trap: we can no longer control our responses to highly palatable foods because our brains have been changed by the foods we eat.

I wanted to know how much the industry understood about how the food we eat affects us; about what I have termed “conditioned hypereating” – “conditioned” because it becomes an automatic response to widely available food, “hyper” because the eating is excessive and hard to control. I turned to Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics.

“Does the industry know that what it feeds us gets us to eat more?” I asked.

“The industry has jacked up what works for it,” Stiglitz said. “The learning is evolutionary.” Practical experience has been its guide – it does not need lab rats when it can try out its ideas on humans. Its decision-makers do not have to analyse human brain circuitry to discover what sells.