Former FDA chief: Ultraprocessed foods are ‘addictive’ like drugs

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What the top doctor did to stop eating junk (archived)

As Kessler explains in his rigorous new book, Diet, Drugs and Dopamine: The new science of achieving a healthy weight, ultra-processed, highly palatable, energy-dense, high-glycaemic foods (he calls them UFFs: ultra-formulated foods) are designed to addict us. “They deliver just the right combination of fat and sugar, fat and salt, fat, sugar and salt — that potent trifecta — to trigger the reward circuits.” They change our brain chemistry, triggering compulsive eating and robbing us of the ability to feel full. They “steal our satiety”, Kessler says. “Losing weight is a process of treating addiction.”

It’s not lousy willpower making us fat. It’s the powerful effect of UFFs on our biology. Over the past fifty years, what we’re eating has caused “this insidious decline in health”. A study, just published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, suggested that about 18,000 deaths of people aged 30 to 69 could be prevented each year in Britain, if ultra-processed-food consumption were reduced. Only now are cardiologists, neurologists, endocrinologists, kidney specialists and oncologists waking up to the culprit, Kessler says.