Hooked: How Processed Food Became Addictive

by Michael Moss

At the end of the nineties, we moved from being worried about fat to being worried about sugar again, and then we paid more attention to calories no matter their source, fat or sugar or starch. (One factor in this shift was a 1998 report from a consumer advocacy group, the Centers for Science in the Public Interest, titled “Liquid Candy: How Soft Drinks Are Harming America’s Health,” which drew media attention to how much soda we were drinking.) But the tiny savings in calories offered by products like Velveeta Light raised an awkward question for the processed-food industry as our concern shifted again. Would eating thirteen fewer calories even matter to our health, weight, or behavior in eating? As we’ve learned, our metabolism and body fat and hormones all work against our efforts to lose weight. So, when our dieting is aimed at losing weight, the answer would seem to be not as much as we’d like to think. Our biology doesn’t have to do much to erase the benefit of eating thirteen fewer calories.