Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions

by Michael Moss

Here’s what they did: They added the most popular non-calorie sweetener, sucralose, to the food that their flies ate, a mixture of sugar and yeast. And the flies went bonkers. They couldn’t sleep. Moreover, they seemed to feel like they were starving, which caused them to eat more. It might make us feel less concerned about our addiction to processed food to hear what happened next. Despite eating more, the flies didn’t gain weight. But the explanation for this is equally disconcerting. They didn’t gain weight, the researchers surmise, because of another change to their behavior. The poor flies couldn’t sit still. They flew around and around, for days on end, their little wings going like hummingbirds, burning up all of the extra energy they got from eating more. The flies had become hyperactive, until the sucralose dosing was stopped, when the flies regained control of their behavior.