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

by Michael Moss

He’s working on technology that can help us develop a stronger memory for the things we now struggle to eat more of, like vegetables; in his smartphone game, we can dig deeper memory channels by choosing carrots over fries, again and again. But merely asking a different question when we sidle up to the pastry bar at Starbucks can help to change how we value food. “When we say, ‘Okay, which scone looks better today, this one or that one?’ we’re totally activating the reward circuitry of the brain and turning off the brake, which is when we decide to eat that scone,” he says. “But if instead we think about how that scone is going to clog up our arteries and increase our odds of a stroke or just make us look shitty in a bikini, it turns down the reward circuitry and turns up the brake.”