The End of Craving: Recovering the Lost Wisdom of Eating Well

by Mark Schatzker

Every impulse we have—to sleep, to sneeze, to peel an orange, pour a glass of wine, get work done, or go to the bathroom—is translated by the brain into a “behavioral final common path.” Pleasure is to the mind as money is to the economy. It is the oldest and most fundamental unit of exchange.

Sensible and highly functional people smoke, which is well understood to cause disease and early death, because they crave cigarettes. Addiction wasn’t about basking in a euphoric state. Addiction was a magnetic pull, as though someone had turned up the sensitivity on pleasure’s missile tracking system. Addiction wasn’t caused by too much “liking,” as everyone always thought. Addiction was a case of too much “wanting.”

It’s not the high that does addicts in. It’s the desire to get high, even though that desire doesn’t actually deliver the high they so badly want.

Tasting food engages more gray matter than any other activity.

We may think games are about winning and losing, but those are just outcomes. Games are driven by the excitement of not knowing what’s going to happen next.

What is all this uncertainty doing? Exactly what a behavioral economist would predict. It is producing a vigorous drive to avoid losses.