In tandem they excite the area of the brain called the striatum, which is associated with compulsive behavior.īut Big Food, a $1-trillion industry, is even more cunning in shaping our eating habits by taking advantage of our deepest instincts when it comes to food. And new research by Dana Small, a neuroscientist at Yale University, shows that we’re even more vulnerable to the combination of sugar and fats in things like milkshakes and chocolate chip cookies.
Sugar, for instance, which many people cite as a trigger for cravings, is now being added to an estimated two-thirds of the items in the supermarket. Processed-food makers do this in part by perfecting their use of additives to maximize the appeal of their products. It’s designed to make us want to eat more, and in ways that impede our ability to say no. Unplugging your senses to curb a desire might seem a bit extreme for something like food, but there is growing evidence that much of what’s being sold at the grocery store and fast-food restaurants is more seductive than we knew. Said one review: “It’s like willpower in a bottle!” For an hour or so, brownies and doughnuts and Oreo cookies all taste like putty, which helped Goldstein control his cravings so well that he put the plant’s extract into little white pills, which he named Sweet Defeat. Robert Goldstein, a hedge fund manager in New York, was getting huge cravings for sweets when he came across a tropical plant called Gymnema sylvestre that works a little like methadone for heroin addicts.Ĭompounds extracted from the woody vine keep the brain from getting overly excited for sugar by disabling the sweet receptors on the tongue.
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