Meals is meant to style good. When paired, sure flavors encapsulate a few of life’s biggest pleasures — like the wedding of salty and candy that creates the straightforward pleasure of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. However some meals scientists have been questioning: Is it potential for meals to style too good?
They’re not speaking in regards to the first chew of a juicy peach, a seared steak, or a ripe tomato. They’re referring to meals merchandise designed to hijack the mind’s reward system and override the physique’s fullness cues.
“Consuming must be an pleasing expertise, however you need to have the ability to cease,” says Tera Fazzino, PhD, affiliate director of the Cofrin Logan Middle for Habit Analysis and Therapy on the College of Kansas. “These meals can push you to eat greater than you need.”
Specialists name these delectables “hyperpalatable.” They’re engineered to ship mixed doses of fats, sugar, sodium, and carbohydrates at thresholds that don’t exist in nature. These calorically dense combos gentle up the mind’s reward system, also referred to as the hedonic pathway, evoking emotions of enjoyment in a lot the identical means alcohol, nicotine, and opiates do.
In all, virtually 70 p.c of the meals out there in america are hyperpalatable, in keeping with a 2022 paper revealed in Public Well being Diet. The most typical offenders are frozen and ready-made meals, snack meals and desserts, processed meats, faculty lunches, and even meals merchandise marketed to assist individuals reduce weight.
And since hyperpalatable meals should not designed to be eaten sparsely, we’re all weak to the consequences of a weight-reduction plan oversaturated with them, which embody nutrient deficiencies, systemic irritation, and microbiome disruption.
The Hyperpalatable Threshold
Hyperpalatable meals are distinct from ultraprocessed meals, however the overlap is critical. Roughly 80 p.c of ultraprocessed meals (UPFs) are hyperpalatable, however not all hyperpalatable meals (HPFs) are ultraprocessed.
Because the time period suggests, UPFs include industrially extracted vitamins and components not usually utilized by residence cooks, like sodium benzoate and carrageenan. (Be taught extra about UPFs at “The Fact About Ultraprocessed Meals.”)
Hyperpalatable meals, in the meantime, are sometimes frequent snacks or ready meals made with added sugar, salt, and fats to turbocharge their taste and texture. For those who can’t cease consuming it, most definitely it’s a hyperpalatable meals.
HPFs will be categorised into three teams based mostly on ingredient pairings: added fats and sugar (assume desserts, cookies, and ice cream); carbohydrates and salt (akin to in crackers, pretzels, and popcorn); and fats and salt (present in processed meats and cheese merchandise).
Any of those nutrient combos makes meals extra palatable, says Filippa Juul, PhD, MSc, a dietary epidemiologist at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn, N.Y. However particular ratios of those nutrient pairs could make it downright irresistible. “Over sure thresholds, the components grow to be extra reinforcing, and it will likely be tougher to cease consuming them.”
Analysis has proven that when a meals reaches a specific ratio of fats and salt, for instance, individuals eat as much as 30 p.c extra of it.
“When the purpose of meals processing is to hedonically amplify flavors we already discover rewarding, meals turns into too potent for many people to eat sparsely,” explains Ashley Gearhardt, PhD, a psychology professor on the College of Michigan. “These formulations bliss us out in methods nothing in nature can compete with.”
That expectation of a reward could lead individuals to eat only for pleasure (hedonic consuming) fairly than to fulfill starvation or present vitality (homeostatic consuming), says David Wiss, PhD, RDN, IFMCP, a psychological well being nutritionist in Los Angeles. “Folks begin to eat for the neurochemical reward fairly than metabolic want.”
The Industrial Palate
A knock-on impact of getting so many hyperpalatable meals within the meals provide is that more-nutritious choices — greens, fruits, legumes, and entire grains — get crowded off our plates. Complete meals like recent berries or unsalted nuts derive a lot of their taste from a single nutrient, akin to sugar or fats. The flavorful nutrient is paired with a slow-digesting nutrient, like fiber or protein. That stability is essential for steadying blood sugar and giving the mind time to register when the abdomen is full.
In distinction, hyperpalatable meals have amped-up combos of flavorful added components, however they’re stripped of vitamins that sluggish digestion and create a way of fullness. And since they’re so extensively out there, many people have developed a desire for these hedonically amplified, nutrient-poor meals. Meals historian Amy Bentley, PhD, refers to this as “the economic palate.”
Gearhardt provides: “The mind is just not designed to acknowledge attractioning meals as a risk. That’s how meals firms use our biology in opposition to us.”
In preindustrial instances, famine was a risk to survival — so people had been extremely motivated to seek out calorie-dense vitamins, like carbohydrates and fat, she explains. A meals’s look, odor, and style might override emotions of fullness, so individuals might overeat in instances of lots to endure the lean instances to come back.
These instincts had been challenged by the industrialization of the meals provide within the mid-Twentieth century, when firms started manufacturing more and more low cost, novel, and extremely palatable meals. Between 1985 and 1998, the variety of new meals merchandise in america practically doubled. Meals firms began “reformulating their merchandise to maximise palatability,” says Juul — all to develop their backside strains.
Fed by Huge Tobacco
“Bliss level,” a time period utilized by the meals trade, refers back to the ranges of salt, sugar, and fats that the mind perceives as “good” and that make a meals irresistible to our style buds. Once we eat a meals that satisfies our bliss level, the mind’s hedonic pathway is activated, releasing a surge of dopamine that reinforces the habits.
“That dopamine rush is what drives us to crave the meals time and again,” says Laura Schmidt, PhD, MSW, MPH, professor of well being coverage on the College of California, San Francisco. “The dopamine-driven reward system within the mind responds extra rapidly to sugars than [to] nicotine.”
Within the Eighties, when Huge Tobacco was dealing with elevated federal regulation, tobacco firms determined to diversify into meals merchandise. Inside the decade, Philip Morris purchased and consolidated Basic Meals and Kraft, which included family names like Oscar Mayer, Jell-O, and Publish. R. J. Reynolds bought Nabisco and its blockbuster hits Oreo cookies, Ritz crackers, and Fig Newtons. “They took product improvement and advertising and marketing instruments that labored for cigarettes and utilized them to meals,” Schmidt says.
“[Big Tobacco] took product improvement and advertising and marketing instruments that labored for cigarettes and utilized them to meals.”
Past taste, a meals’s colour, packaging, and texture — even the sound it makes — are all engineered to cue cravings. Take into account the sharp, crisp pop you hear when opening a can of soda and the way your mind anticipates that first chilly, bubbly sip.
“Firms realized they might get their meals’s colour, taste, and even packaging linked to the second when the mind’s reward system kicks in,” she says.
Schmidt spent years sifting by means of the 19 million inner paperwork launched by Huge Tobacco as a part of a authorized settlement within the Nineties. She realized that tobacco firms had created subtle instruments to measure individuals’s response to flavors, colours, and components in cigarettes, after which utilized that very same data to creating meals extra pleasurable.
“That’s the phrase they used — pleasurable,” she notes. “It comes straight out of many a long time of constructing cigarettes extra pleasurable to smoke.”
By 1989, Philip Morris’s Kraft Basic Meals was the biggest meals firm on this planet. And from the late Eighties till the early twenty first century, Huge Tobacco continued to affect the meals trade. In 2024, a research revealed within the journal Habit discovered that meals as soon as produced by Huge Tobacco had been as much as 80 p.c extra prone to be hyperpalatable in contrast with merchandise from nontobacco firms.
Even after tobacco firms bought their meals subsidiaries, within the early 2000s, the variety of hyperpalatable meals merchandise out there in america climbed one other 7 p.c. “The market grew to become saturated as different meals firms possible raced to catch up,” Fazzino explains.
Mapping Huge Tobacco’s involvement in cooking up hyperpalatable merchandise was a light-bulb second for Fazzino in understanding the economic palate: “It introduced me full circle again to the habit realm.”
As of late, Fazzino is researching what threshold of salt, sugar, fats, and carbohydrates in numerous meals spurs addictive behaviors. “If I can take a heavy-hitting HPF like potato chips and check if dropping sodium beneath a sure threshold reduces its addictive nature, that’s a begin,” she says. “It might be a harm-reduction strategy much like what labored with tobacco.”
The place Diet Analysis Meets Actual Life.
Don’t Miss a Story.
5 Methods to Reclaim your palate
Many people have grown accustomed to residing in a hyperpalatable world and have maybe even acquired a desire for synthetic flavors and components. Psychological well being nutritionist David Wiss, PhD, RDN, IFMCP, noticed this in actual life when his toddler tasted processed meals for the primary time. “As quickly as her mind registered the reward of hyperpalatable meals, there was an expectancy that made common meals style boring,” he says.
However entire meals aren’t boring. With somewhat consciousness and creativity, you possibly can wrest your palate again from the meals trade. Wiss shares the following tips.
( 1 )
SWAP FOODS STRATEGICALLY. As a result of hyperpalatable meals are calorically dense, swapping them for low-calorie fare can depart the physique feeling undernourished, says Wiss. “If the mind senses too massive of a dopamine drop, it interprets a risk and intensifies the cravings.”
As a substitute, he advises, preserve your self nourished with minimally processed, calorically dense meals. For instance, add an avocado to your salad, high your fruit with nut butter, and go for full-fat dairy.
( 2 )
ENGAGE YOUR SENSES. Your mind is drawn to a meals’s sensory pleasures. Take into account Peanut M&M’s: The colourful shell makes a satisfying crackle once you chew into it; your enamel sink by means of the candy chocolatey inside earlier than crunching right into a salty peanut.
“It’s necessary to re-create sensory results,” Wiss says. At residence, add texture to yogurt with crushed macadamia nuts and blueberries, or sprinkle pumpkin seeds on an omelet or grain bowl. Enhance the visible attraction of a meal by topping your plate with crumbled feta, a swirl of scorching sauce, or a sprinkle of microgreens. (Visible attraction counts for lots. See “Feast Your Eyes: The Significance of Your Meal’s Visible Enchantment” for extra.)
( 3 )
REDISCOVER CHEWING. Many hyperpalatable meals are designed to soften in your mouth, making it tough for the mind to trace how a lot you’ve eaten. Chewing is a key a part of the cascade of wholesome digestion and satiety alerts. Search for entire meals that give your jaw a exercise, like nuts, apples, or steel-cut oats — and chew them completely.
“The aim is to have favorable bidirectional communication between the intestine and the mind, and that’s what hyperpalatable meals override,” Wiss says. “You want to have the ability to belief your starvation and satiety cues.”
( 4 )
RELEASE PERFECTIONISM. Wiss tells his shoppers to not get caught up in “being on or off the wagon.” As a substitute, transfer at your individual tempo, even when it means utilizing hyperpalatable meals as a bridge to more healthy selections.
For those who discover salads inedible, for example, crunch up a small bag of your favourite chips and pour the crumbs over your bowl of greens. The following day, he says, possibly use half the bag of chips, after which use much less over time. “Tapering is essential.”
( 5 )
FIND YOUR OWN BLISS. Seek for entire meals or recipes that scratch your bliss-point itch. These bliss-point doppelgängers don’t must be sophisticated. “For those who cease and concentrate, a slice of cool tropical fruit will be pure bliss on a scorching summer season day,” Wiss explains.
Plus, meals could be a catalyst for different feel-good hormones. Serotonin, for instance, is activated by a way of function and which means. That may come from sharing a meal with individuals you care about, having a heartfelt dialog over the dinner desk, or serving to to organize meals or clear up, he provides. “It’s not simply the mind however the terrain — the human — that issues.”
(Expertise conscious consuming with Jon Kabat-Zinn’s raisin observe — a easy option to decelerate, tune in, and savor the second.)
This text initially appeared as “The Lure of Hyperpalatable Meals” within the March/April 2026 subject of Expertise Life.
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As the term suggests, UPFs contain industrially extracted nutrients and additives not typically used by home cooks, like sodium benzoate and carrageenan. (Learn more about UPFs at “The Truth About Ultraprocessed Foods.”)
Hyperpalatable foods, meanwhile, are often common snacks or prepared meals made with added sugar, salt, and fat to turbocharge their flavor and texture. If you can’t stop eating it, most likely it’s a hyperpalatable food.
HPFs can be classified into three groups based on ingredient pairings: added fat and sugar (think cakes, cookies, and ice cream); carbohydrates and salt (such as in crackers, pretzels, and popcorn); and fat and salt (found in processed meats and cheese products).”
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“When the aim of food processing is to hedonically amplify flavors we already find rewarding, food becomes too potent for many of us to consume in moderation,” explains Ashley Gearhardt, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan. “These formulations bliss us out in ways nothing in nature can compete with.”
That expectation of a reward may lead people to eat just for pleasure (hedonic eating) rather than to satisfy hunger or provide energy (homeostatic eating), says David Wiss, PhD, RDN, IFMCP, a mental health nutritionist in Los Angeles. “People start to eat for the neurochemical reward rather than metabolic need.””
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In contrast, hyperpalatable foods have amped-up combinations of flavorful added ingredients, but they’re stripped of nutrients that slow digestion and create a sense of fullness. And because they’re so widely available, many of us have developed a preference for these hedonically amplified, nutrient-poor foods. Food historian Amy Bentley, PhD, refers to this as “the industrial palate.”
Gearhardt adds: “The brain is not designed to recognize appealing food as a threat. That’s how food companies use our biology against us.”
In preindustrial times, famine was a threat to survival — so humans were highly motivated to find calorie-dense nutrients, like carbohydrates and fats, she explains. A food’s appearance, smell, and taste could override feelings of fullness, so people could overeat in times of plenty to endure the lean times to come.
These instincts were challenged by the industrialization of the food supply in the mid-20th century, when companies began manufacturing increasingly cheap, novel, and highly palatable foods. Between 1985 and 1998, the number of new food products in the United States nearly doubled. Food companies started “reformulating their products to maximize palatability,” says Juul — all to grow their bottom lines.”
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“That dopamine rush is what drives us to crave the food again and again,” says Laura Schmidt, PhD, MSW, MPH, professor of health policy at the University of California, San Francisco. “The dopamine-driven reward system in the brain responds more quickly to sugars than [to] nicotine.””
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Past taste, a meals’s colour, packaging, and texture — even the sound it makes — are all engineered to cue cravings. Take into account the sharp, crisp pop you hear when opening a can of soda and the way your mind anticipates that first chilly, bubbly sip.
“Firms realized they might get their meals’s colour, taste, and even packaging linked to the second when the mind’s reward system kicks in,” she says.
Schmidt spent years sifting by means of the 19 million inner paperwork launched by Huge Tobacco as a part of a authorized settlement within the Nineties. She realized that tobacco firms had created subtle instruments to measure individuals’s response to flavors, colours, and components in cigarettes, after which utilized that very same data to creating meals extra pleasurable.
“That’s the phrase they used — pleasurable,” she notes. “It comes straight out of many a long time of constructing cigarettes extra pleasurable to smoke.”
By 1989, Philip Morris’s Kraft Basic Meals was the biggest meals firm on this planet. And from the late Eighties till the early twenty first century, Huge Tobacco continued to affect the meals trade. In 2024, a research revealed within the journal Habit discovered that meals as soon as produced by Huge Tobacco had been as much as 80 p.c extra prone to be hyperpalatable in contrast with merchandise from nontobacco firms.
Even after tobacco firms bought their meals subsidiaries, within the early 2000s, the variety of hyperpalatable meals merchandise out there in america climbed one other 7 p.c. “The market grew to become saturated as different meals firms possible raced to catch up,” Fazzino explains.
Mapping Huge Tobacco’s involvement in cooking up hyperpalatable merchandise was a light-bulb second for Fazzino in understanding the economic palate: “It introduced me full circle again to the habit realm.”
As of late, Fazzino is researching what threshold of salt, sugar, fats, and carbohydrates in numerous meals spurs addictive behaviors. “If I can take a heavy-hitting HPF like potato chips and check if dropping sodium beneath a sure threshold reduces its addictive nature, that’s a begin,” she says. “It might be a harm-reduction strategy much like what labored with tobacco.””
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As a substitute, he advises, preserve your self nourished with minimally processed, calorically dense meals. For instance, add an avocado to your salad, high your fruit with nut butter, and go for full-fat dairy.
( 2 ) ENGAGE YOUR SENSES. Your mind is drawn to a meals’s sensory pleasures. Take into account Peanut M&M’s: The colourful shell makes a satisfying crackle once you chew into it; your enamel sink by means of the candy chocolatey inside earlier than crunching right into a salty peanut.
“It’s necessary to re-create sensory results,” Wiss says. At residence, add texture to yogurt with crushed macadamia nuts and blueberries, or sprinkle pumpkin seeds on an omelet or grain bowl. Enhance the visible attraction of a meal by topping your plate with crumbled feta, a swirl of scorching sauce, or a sprinkle of microgreens.
( 3 ) REDISCOVER CHEWING. Many hyperpalatable meals are designed to soften in your mouth, making it tough for the mind to trace how a lot you’ve eaten. Chewing is a key a part of the cascade of wholesome digestion and satiety alerts. Search for entire meals that give your jaw a exercise, like nuts, apples, or steel-cut oats — and chew them completely.
“The aim is to have favorable bidirectional communication between the intestine and the mind, and that’s what hyperpalatable meals override,” Wiss says. “You want to have the ability to belief your starvation and satiety cues.”
( 4 ) RELEASE PERFECTIONISM. Wiss tells his shoppers to not get caught up in “being on or off the wagon.” As a substitute, transfer at your individual tempo, even when it means utilizing hyperpalatable meals as a bridge to more healthy selections.
For those who discover salads inedible, for example, crunch up a small bag of your favourite chips and pour the crumbs over your bowl of greens. The following day, he says, possibly use half the bag of chips, after which use much less over time. “Tapering is essential.”
(4) FIND YOUR OWN BLISS. Seek for entire meals or recipes that scratch your bliss-point itch. These bliss-point doppelgängers don’t must be sophisticated. “For those who cease and concentrate, a slice of cool tropical fruit will be pure bliss on a scorching summer season day,” Wiss explains.
Plus, meals could be a catalyst for different feel-good hormones. Serotonin, for instance, is activated by a way of function and which means. That may come from sharing a meal with individuals you care about, having a heartfelt dialog over the dinner desk, or serving to to organize meals or clear up, he provides. “It’s not simply the mind however the terrain — the human — that issues.””
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The submit The way to Break Free From Hyperpalatable Meals appeared first on Expertise Life.